As we quickly move towards a '5G' versatile world, IT leaders are now battling with the intricate difficulties of dealing with a developing mobile workforce and technology estate.
Top among these difficulties is the steady journey to protect private corporate and individual data on cell phones.
Gadgets that are frequently outside the immediate control and security of conventional IT frameworks and with users that don't mull over the dangers of associating with unstable "free Wi-Fi" or tapping on an online social media link.
In this article, we will investigate the challenges of protecting your workforce from mobile 'phishing' attacks where 'hackers' exploit web-based social media links to gather information and corrupt user devices.
The security challenges mobility introduced to the enterprises are –
- Administrators want to allow employee to freely use the web on their mobile devices, but also want to block suspicious website & app.
- Administrators are concerned that employees use a variety of browsers on their mobile devices and are not always warned when using insecure websites, so they want to introduce a warning before an employee visits such a website or wants to download a potentially risky mobile app.
- Security departments want protection parity across all endpoints.
- IT department will not have to backhaul traffic, effectively putting mobile devices behind a firewall, which offers poor experience and performance issue for employee.
Along with these enterprise mobile challenges, there are few myths about mobile security:
Myth no 1 – Existing Phishing protection covers mobile devices
Traditionally, Enterprises use secure email gateway, antiviruses, firewall & employee education to safeguard against phishing attacks but that’s not always worked with mobile devices because employees are using these devices for their corporate as well as personal use.
Employees can have personal & corporate email on the same devices, where attacker can target personal email (least secure) for phishing attack & can steal corporate data.
Myth no 2 - Phishing attacks only occur on email
Phishing attacks are no more limited to the emails, mobile devices have opened entirely new avenues of attack for malicious attacks.
Attackers now take advantage of MMS & SMS for phishing as well as the most popular social media Apps Like – WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram etc. Security professional who ignored these channels of attack put their organisation at risk.
Solution:-
These security challenges & threats should be addressed professionally by all enterprises. However, it usually a complex & time consuming task for an organisation to address all challenges related to the corporate mobile management whilst they are also trying to carry on business as usual.
That’s the reason there is a growing demand of Telecom Consultants which provide professional mobile management services for corporates.
Utelize is one such provider and worth considering for businesses that are looking for proactive ongoing management of mobile airtime and connections, devices and security; their managed mobile services are designed to ensure your data and devices are secure, costs and usage are under control and your IT team is released from mobile administration to focus on more strategic and transformation projects.