Does Mobile Security and Speed go hand in hand?
At the core of every enterprise mobile task is security and speed. Companies want to perform business activities faster without loss of data. Generally, it is hard for companies to achieve both. Companies have to sacrifice one thing or the other. In a recent survey by Verizon, 32% of respondents admitted that they have sacrificed mobile security to improve expediency or business performance. And the result was that a forty-five percent of that group said it suffered data loss or downtime because of a mobile security incident in 2017. So, mobile security and speed should be considered an important element of enterprise mobile strategy. Android devices are highly prone to mobile security breaches compared to iOS devices. Common mobile threats are ransomware, overload of networks w/ bogus traffic, infringing the privacy of individual, spoofing and tampering data.
Whatever the risks may be, enterprises cannot avoid using mobile devices as they help perform tasks faster. So how does a company attain the benefits of mobile security and speed? Enterprise security needs to catch up to support the speed of mobility.
Majority of the companies currently have Anti-virus/anti-malware and device encryption in place for mobile security purposes. Mobile security technologies that could see a growth in the next one year are Data loss prevention, Mobile endpoint security, Device encryption and Strong/two-factor authentication.
Basic security practices companies shall follow are-
- Changing all default passwords
- Encrypting data sent over public networks
- Restricting access on a need-to-know basis
- Regularly testing security systems
Organizations should have these four basic security practices in place to avoid majority of security breaches. As per the report by Verizon,
- Only 1 in 7 of companies surveyed had all the four security practices in place.
- 89% of the companies follow only one of the four security practices.
Companies are understanding the risks and threats associated with mobile apps and have increased their mobile security budgets in the past year. 61% of survey’s respondents expect their mobile security budget will increase in the next 12 months. Some of the measures companies can take to improve mobile security are preventing users from downloading apps other than custom app stores, deploying mobile endpoint security, training employees on mobile security and reducing the use of less secure connections.