Enterprise Mobility is changing the landscape of IT security for the companies who are toiling hard to protect their sensitive information. High escalation of the BYOD and CYOD, simultaneously the bad factors are highly affecting the mobile operating systems, mainly targeting iOS devices. Now, making the devices secure enough is the real challenge.
The threat of security arrives only because of the always “on” tendency of the mobile phones, which makes them an ideally designed surveillance tool. Other features like, microphones, high resolution cameras, embedded GPS and multiple network types like Wi-Fi, cellular and Bluetooth, on top of that, the ability to hold gigabytes of data, which are direct threats to security.
Unfortunately, these treats are totally unaware to the company until a data breach happens. Many of these security breaches are the outcome of the poor security discipline and human error.
While it comes to the network controlling, things have become worst concerning security issues. Though, the productivity has come away far ahead in the recent times, but with it comes the security issues, which is hard to handle. The concern is just because of the way workers are accessing the corporate data. Employees of a company are accessing corporate data on smartphones, tablets and wearables from a variety of locations, creating security challenges. The condition is like, users can, without any efforts find ways to get around IT and use unsanctioned personal devices, apps and networks to get their work done. There are some issues which will become a main security concern in the coming year.
BYOD, High Security Concern
Though, today BYOD is the phenomenon in most of the companies, because of the ease of use and cost savings, it will no longer be the same. The extra bandwidth that these devices consume and the security issues that occur from an individual’s device hygiene – download behavior, system updates, and antivirus, the IT and security professionals have to be very conscious about it. Companies have to consider mobile device management (MDM) to be ahead in the matter of security concern.
Mobile Malware Issues
There is a vast problem of mobile malware and in the coming time it will be on the verge, specifically for the Android users. It is really getting difficult to spot the malware in the Android devices. The devices are being used on the business setting specifically confronting this threat of malware.
There is one more thing which is on the verge, and that is mobile payments which are becoming a matter of ease for the hackers to target the audience. By the way of targeting the Android devices, the hackers can implement a specific malware and so can target the national or global environment directly.
Security Concern about Internet of Things (IoT)
The security attacks are most of the time a threat to the IoT devices. IP cameras, SOHO routers, smart TV’s, and other connected devices are always under a strong threat of security. If any vulnerability gets detected in any device the others will be automatically get affected and come under the dire of security attack.
Once a vulnerability is discovered in one device, it opens the door for others with that device to attack as well. A problem with IoT is that device manufacturers have either not figured out or are ignoring the importance of software/firmware patches. So far, companies are being reactive and not proactive. A user should not have to log in to his/her router or device software to discover that a patch has been released. Patching should be handled in the same manner as Microsoft does it. When new vulnerabilities have been discovered, new patches are released, delivered, and installed on reboot. Given the number of devices that will soon be online, the responsibility to provide patches should fall on manufacturers who sell equipment – not the end-users.
In addition, all IoT devices are gathering information about users. Since laws are far behind today’s reality, gaining access to the data stored by these devices may not be as hard to obtain as accessing other devices.
High Concern Over Hackers to Target Mobile Payment Services
There is a lot of security concern surrounded by leading mobile payment platforms such as Apple Pay or Samsung Pay. The threat is not through outright breaking of their payment processing algorithms but via analysis of the entire system to identify bypassed measures and vulnerabilities, leading to credit card information fraud, extortion, and unauthorized use. There are examples before us of the stolen credit card info has been successfully added to online payment accounts without bank verification, allowing fraudsters to use the stolen card information at some stores.
Mobile Web Browser-Based Hacking
The mobile Web Browsers are also getting hacked, stating the possibilities of the mobile versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and related kernels on Android and iPhone to be hacked frequently in the coming days. These types of hacking allows the hacker to bypass its many system-level security measures. This webkit-based exploits enables hackers to bypass a browser’s sandbox, or the security measures built into modern browsers.
Remote Device Hijacking/Eavesdropping
The emphasis is more on the smartphone now, just because of the explosive growth of Android devices. These types of handsets come with preloaded applications that are generally not analyzed or validated by Google’s security team, the result is the exposure to the remote device hijacking. This threat will increase with the open, customizable nature of Android smartphones by OEMs, which will continue and worsen this threat.
DDoS Attacks
The most important one is, a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks which have been an infrequent and short-lived annoyance, one that most businesses online are relatively well-equipped to deal with. The immense growth of mobile and other Internet-connected devices is allowing the DDoS to expand.
So, keeping all of these security concerns in mind, business have to be ready to fight against data breach during 2016.
