Mobile devices have taken the world by storm. The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates that four billion people use mobile devices of one kind or another. Three billion are using feature phones to call and text, but a billion are now using smart phones to access the Internet as well. The global movement to smart phones is still in its infancy. The devices are likely to experience double-digit sales growth for the next 5 years as the world builds out 3G wireless networks and the devices themselves become more powerful.

The move to smartphones will have a profound qualitative impact on computing. In 2014, more people will be accessing the Internet through mobile devices than via desktops, if current trends continue. This will change the nature of the global workplace. The Internet will be much more pervasive and embedded—the computing power necessary to perform many work tasks will be always on and available almost everywhere.

The ascendancy of mobile computing offers companies enormous opportunities to improve the productivity of a company's employees. A few companies will continue to restrict their operations to a traditional workplace. But the vast majority will have to harness cyber mobility to remain competitive. To do so, they will have to tackle a host of challenging new security issues discussed in this report.

Both opportunity and difficulty lie clearly visible. According to the global survey of senior executives conducted for this report, organizations are already moving with determination to gain an advantage. Four in 10 (42 percent) executives say their organizations have revised business strategies to reap the benefits of cyber mobility. The biggest problem caused by cyber mobility, according to the same executives, is new security threats (cited by 62 percent). Information is becoming a more central and essential organizational asset. Balance-sheet health has less to do with inventories of iron ore or shipping containers, and more to do with the knowledge held by experienced employees and digital records about prospective customers. Techniques for protecting and managing those intangible assets lag behind our needs, however. Even in the face of compliance laws including Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and PCI, massive data breaches regularly occur.

This report, written by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton, explores cyber mobility and its security challenges. It details how - for a motivated and alert organization - security can be not just a problem, but also a strength.