Association Recommends Five-step ROUTE to Stay Informed

 

Rolling Meadows, IL, USA —Fifty-eight percent of consumers who have a smart device use location-based applications, despite concerns about safety and third-party use of their personal information for marketing purposes, according to a recent survey from nonprofit global information security association ISACA.

A telephone poll of 1,000 people shows that many have concerns or incomplete information about geolocation, which uses data acquired from a computer or mobile device to identify a physical location:

 

·         Top concerns include third-party use of personal information for marketing purposes (24%) and strangers knowing too much about people’s activities (24%)

·         Personal safety is the next biggest concern (21%)

·         43% of people do not read the agreements on apps before downloading them, and of those who do read the agreements, 25% believe these agreements are not clear about how location information is being used

“Like any other kind of information-sharing, location-based apps can be tremendously convenient but also risky. Knowledge is power. People should educate themselves so they can understand how their data is being used or know how to disable this feature,” said Marios Damianides, CISM, CISA, CA, CPA, past international president of ISACA and partner, Advisory Services, at Ernst & Young. “Businesses that collect location-based data have a responsibility, too. They need to define an ethical governance policy and communicate it transparently.”

Applications with geolocation capabilities typically offer benefits such as precise navigation, location-based discount coupons or easy information sharing through features like social check-ins. Close to one-third (32%) of consumers in ISACA’s survey use location-based apps more than they did a year ago.

Most Popular Uses of Location-based Apps

The location-based activities most frequently done on a smartphone, tablet or laptop are getting directions via applications using the respondent’s current location (59%), and tagging photos on social media, dating or photo-sharing sites such as Facebook or instagram (44%).

Interestingly, the next most popular activity is disabling location-based features on select apps and services (38%). According to the ISACA white paper “Geolocation: Risk, Issues and Strategies,” malicious use of geolocation data can put both an individual and an enterprise at risk when personal information like gender, race, occupation and financial history are combined with information from a GPS and geolocation tags.

Geolocation is becoming a real source of commercial and financial benefit for organisations, but unfortunately, as with any technology that becomes popular, it is also becoming more interesting for hackers, scammers and spammers,” said Marc Vael, Ph.D., CISA, CISM, CGEIT, director of ISACA and chair of the ISACA Knowledge Board. “This survey is a reminder to pursue an ‘embrace and educate’ approach to geolocation—embrace the benefits the technology brings, while first educating yourself or your enterprise about the potential risk.”

Stay Informed with Five-step ROUTE

ISACA advises a five-step “ROUTE” to follow for staying informed about geolocation services:

·    Read mobile app agreements to see what information you are sharing.

·    Only enable geolocation when the benefits outweigh the risk.

·    Understand that others can track your current and past locations.

·    Think before posting tagged photos to social media sites.

·    Embrace the technology, and educate yourself and others.

Full survey results and a ROUTE graphic are available at www.isaca.org/geolocation.

 

About the Survey Methodology The ISACA geolocation survey, conducted in America, helps gauge current attitudes and behaviors related to the use of geolocation-enabled devices and applications and the blurring boundaries between personal and work devices. The findings are based on a telephone survey conducted among two national probability samples that, when combined, consists of 1,005 adults (505 men and 500 women), 18 years of age and older, living in the continental United States. Interviewing for this ORC International’s (ORC) CARAVAN® Survey was completed on 8-11 March 2012; 755 interviews were from the landline sample and 250 interviews from the cell phone sample. At a 95 percent confidence level, the margin of error for the total sample is +/- 3 percent.

 

About ISACA

With 95,000 constituents worldwide, ISACA (www.isaca.org) is a leading global provider of knowledge, certifications, community, advocacy and education on information systems assurance and security, enterprise governance and management of IT, and IT-related risk and compliance. Founded in 1969, the nonprofit ISACA attests IT skills and knowledge through the CISA®, CISM®, CGEIT® and CRISC™ designations. In mid-April, ISACA is releasing COBIT 5, a business framework for the governance and management of enterprise IT.

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