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Modern IT administrators can only wish they had this technology that was the staple of spy movies and TV shows in the 1960s. Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) is a massive data security threat for most organizations, and few are doing enough.

Roughly 30 percent of corporate data is stored solely on laptops, tablets and smartphones, according to research firm, Gartner (News - Alert), yet 70 percent of organizations cannot remotely wipe more than a handful of the devices that access their data by some estimates. Worse, 78 percent don’t encrypt mobile business data, and 87 percent don’t pack up smartphones and tablets. Even for laptops, long a mobile business staple, an estimated 40 percent are not backed up.

“The irony is that IT departments have spent years building a robust infrastructure for server backup but are dragging their feet in protecting corporate data on mobile devices that are small enough to be easily forgotten or pickpocketed – and that regularly are,” noted Jaspreet Singh in a blog post for Pandodaily recently.

What’s needed is self-destructing data like those used in old spy movies, apparently.

But of course there are other, more real-life options for firms that actually take data security seriously.

The foundation of every BYOD strategy needs to be comprehensive cloud backup and file management combined with remote data provisioning and control.

With data stored and backed up in the cloud, there will be less data only residing on a single, easily losable mobile device. There also will be less need for employees to leverage public cloud file sharing services such as Dropbox (News - Alert), which set the scene for exposing corporate data.

The ability to remotely control corporate data, whether on a company-sponsored device or a BYOD smartphone, is also key when it comes to mobile security. This should include the ability to encrypt data, perform remote data wipes for lost or stolen devices, selectively delete data on user-owned devices to prevent departing employees from taking corporate data with them, and trace all administrator and end user activities for accountability, according to Singh.

It also is important that enterprises set up policy management and access controls to shared data that place view-only restrictions on sensitive shared files in order to prevent downloads and associated leakage risks.

MDM firms such as MobileIron can deliver on these fundamental needs; MobileIron’s VSP technology, for instance, enables IT admins to create policies that manage end-user access to mobile data, detect if a device is jailbroken, and remove access to any device out of compliance. Its Sentry technology also lets workers access files that are often times behind the firewall, without needing VPN credentials or compromising security.

It is easy to overlook mobile security, but when crisis strikes, there will be a reckoning for those who put it off for later.