While being on a constant mobile security lookout is the need of the hour, there is more than one way to enhance the vigil while increasing the ease of the watch.
According to a study, in 2018, corporate data breaches cost global corporations a total of $3.86 million. On an average, the cost of mobile data security breaches is increasing year by year. And that’s 6.4% more than the estimated cost just one year earlier. Nowadays, mobile security is at the top of every company’s concern.Almost all the workers routinely access corporate data from their smartphones, and that means keeping sensitive info out of the wrong hands is an increasingly intricate puzzle.
Challenges of keeping a vigil on mobile security posture
- Data leakage because of common mistakes
Leading companies face around a 28% chance of experiencing a data breach in 2019 and 2020.And not to be shocked, data leakage is often a result on the user’s indiscretion as opposed to malware attacks. Generally, the user is responsible for giving certain apps access to their personal information and the connected corporate data in their devices.
One of the solutions to vet mobile apps quickly and seamlessly is by installing mobile threat defense solutions.But the main challenge is how to implement an app vetting process which won’t overwhelm the administrator and won’t frustrate the users. Using products like Symantec’s Endpoint Protection Mobile, CheckPoint’sSandBlast Mobile, and Zimperium’szIPS Protection. – All these utilities scan apps for ‘leaky behavior’ and automates the blocking of problematic processes.
- Guilty of using public Wi-Fi?
Do you use public Wi-Fi networks? At the airport, at the café or restaurants? We all do right? How safe they are?
According to a research done by IBM, corporate mobile devices use Wi-Fi almost three times as much as they use cellular data.Nearly 33% of devices have connected to open and potentially insecure Wi-Fi networks. And almost 4-5% of them have already experienced man-in-the-middle attacks – which means, a form of manual and deliberate attack when a person intercepts the communication between two or more parties. It can make your email, messenger and even your SMS conversation wide open for attackers to leverage.
According to McAfee, network spoofing has increased “dramatically”,and almost more than half don’t bother to secure their connection while travelling and relying on public networks.
- Social Engineering scams
Famous hacker Kevin Mitnick coined the term ‘Social Engineering’, around in the early 90s.Social engineering is the art of exploiting human psychology, rather than technical hacking techniques, to gain access to buildings, systems or data.For instance, instead of trying to find a software vulnerability, a social engineer might call and employee and pose an IT support person, and try to trick the employee into divulging his password.
What is a rule-book technique that a lot of cyber criminals are following nowadays? There are senders of the emails, who impersonate genuine contacts of the recipient to gain access to their bank details or other sensitive personal details. And according to a research, mobile users are about three-times more likely to respond to a phishing email than desktop users as in mobile only the username is displayed and not the full id. A user needs to check the full credential before replying to it.
- Crypto jacking attacks
A new cyber threat added to the list of relevant mobile threats.
Cryptojacking is a type of attack where someone uses a device to min for crypto currency without the owner’s knowledge.And while processing such stuff, it leans heavily on your technology to do it – that means affected phones will probably experience poor battery life and chances of suffering from damage to due to overheating components.
According to Skybox Security analysis,there is a 70% increase in prominence during the year of 2018 compared to the previous half-year period.
Conclusion
If you are providing your employees the remote access to their personal devices plus the ability to work from anywhere, you need to implement tools that increase the security of mobile devices.It can work with multi-factor authentication. You can even introduce mobile device management software (MDMS) also – which will allow organizations to place restrictions and limitations on the devices that connects with corporate ids and networks.
