Emerging Mobile Threats and How to Prevent Them
By Oleg Mogilevsky, Product Marketing Manager, Threat Prevention
In the new normal, your remote workforce is increasingly accessing corporate data from mobile devices. That means the exposure to data breaches is greater than ever, making mobile security is a top concern for every company. In addition, in 2020, Check Point Research observed diverse new and dangerous types of attacks, including COVID-19-related malicious campaigns and sophisticated mobile ransomware attacks.
To help security professionals assess their options and choose the optimal mobile threat defense solution, we listed below the five guiding principles to keep your organization and sensitive data safe.
It has never been more challenging for security and risk management leaders to protect the organization’s mobile devices and strengthen its mobile security posture. But today, the challenge is even more complicated – with an expanded attack surface due to the mass mobilization of the global workforce to the home.
In the age of the COVID-19-driven new normal, the remote workforce is using mobile devices to access corporate data, often over public Wi-Fi networks that are easy to compromise, sending more emails, messaging more often, and sharing more files than ever.
The result is that exposure and risk are at unprecedented levels. In fact, since March 2020, researchers at Check Point observed an enormous rise in the number of attacks and data breaches originating through the mobile endpoint.
We invite you to download the Buyer’s Guide to Mobile Security to learn more about the core principles for choosing the right solution and the questions you should ask during the evaluation process.
The fundamentals of an effective mobile threat defense
To help security leaders choose a mobile security solution that is robust, comprehensive,
designed to keep their organization and sensitive data safe, we have outlined the core principles that make mobile security truly effective these days:
Principle #1: 360° protection of all attack vectors
Mobile devices have three key vectors of attack – the device’s operating system, apps, and the network. Consequently, the optimal mobile device security solution must demonstrate advanced capabilities for securing each of these three vectors.
Principle #2: full visibility into the risk level of the mobile workforce
Having a complete picture of the organization’s mobile security posture is critical to effectively mitigating risk and accelerating response when needed.
The most effective tool for bridging the gap and for managing mobile threats is an advanced and intuitive visual dashboard that provides real-time threat intelligence with visibility into the threats that are impacting the mobile fleet.
Principle #3: scalability, for securing thousands of devices in no time
The different types of devices and operating systems that comprise an organization’s fleet of mobile devices are many, including iOS and Android, ‘bring your own devices’ (BYOD), and corporate-owned units.
What this means is that the optimal mobile security solution must be able to support every device type, operating system, and device-ownership model. And, as the organization grows, it should also be able to scale without adding complexity to the security operation.
Principle #4: maximizing the user experience
There is no doubt that the mobile device is a strategic enabler of productivity. Introducing any interruption to the employee’s mobile user experience due to background activity of the mobile security solution will hinder performance. And this is clearly unacceptable.
Accordingly, the optimal mobile protection solution must avoid impact on device usability, the browsing experience, data consumption, and battery life.
Principle #5: ensuring privacy by design
Ensuring employee privacy is an additional critical mandate.
Though ensuring data privacy can be very challenging when operating in a BYOD model, and particularly at a time when the lines between using mobile devices for work versus personal needs have become blurred following the coronavirus outbreak and global work from home directives.
Nevertheless, going soft on privacy is not an option. As such, the optimal mobile security solution must also be designed for uncompromising privacy protection.
What’s next?
Check Point is committed to helping organizations from all over the world to secure the mobile endpoint.
Download our latest buyer’s guide to help you navigate the market as you search for a comprehensive Mobile Threat Defense solution designed to keep your corporate data safe. The one solution that’s designed to reduce adminstrator overhead and increase user adoption. It fits perfectly into the existing mobile environment, deploys and scales quickly, and protects devices without impacting user experience nor privacy.
Download the Buyer’s Guide to Mobile Security to learn more about the five core principles for choosing the right solution and the questions you should ask during the evaluation process.