A London security firm estimates that 67,000 mobile phones will be lost or stolen during the Summer Olympics, exposing enough potentially sensitive data to fill 200 million books.
The numbers come from Venafi, an enterprise key and certificate specialist that arrived at its figures by adding about a third to the usual 50,000 devices that go missing during a typical two-week period in London. The British capital's population is expected to swell by a third during the summer games.
"Given that an estimated 40% of all mobile devices, or approximately 26,800, are smartphones, the risk of data loss and data theft during the Olympic Games is high. This means that a total of 214.4 terabytes—or the equivalent of 214.4 million books—will likely be lost or otherwise end up in the wrong hands during the Olympic Games," the firm said. "These figures do not include the even-larger data volumes at risk from the loss or theft of other mobile devices, such as laptops and tablets."
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A particular danger is posed by those devices that contain corporate sensitive corporate data or access to it.
"There's been an explosion of corporate data available to users from their mobile devices. This is a real danger and one that is often overlooked," said Gregory Webb, vice president of marketing at Venafi.
"With the ever-shrinking boundaries between work devices and work-enabled personal devices, lost or stolen smartphones and other mobile devices that fall into the wrong hands place companies and business data at tremendous risk," Webb said.
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