"If I hear a device is stolen, I would fully wipe it," Timo Hirvoen, a senior researcher at F-Secure, said. "Otherwise, I would be wondering whether there was something on the device that could lead to sensitive information."
BlackBerry and Samsung offer different containers for personal and work data on their devices, but BYOD users may have other or older devices, Jonathan Sander, strategy and research officer at Stealthbits Technologies, pointed out.
Many organizations "want to roll out a one-size-fits-all solution, and these platform-specific features aren't yet a part of it," he said.
Even if devices in an enterprise have such features, "many security folks don't yet trust [them] and may still mandate a total wipe just in case," Sander said.
Five million mobile devices were lost or stolen last year, according to Vasco Data Security spokesperson John Gunn.
