Mobile device use opens up businesses to extra risk

Mobile devices have become an extension of our everyday lives, but if they are used to access business networks they could be exposing sensitive information to risk.

A new report from Gigamon reveals that most mobile devices run an average of 60-90 applications, facilitating access to email, SaaS-based solutions, cloud storage, social networks, games, news feeds and more.

This leads to an increased attack surface, with growing levels of mobile activity associated with cloud services. What this means to the hacker is that it's relatively easy to construct highly targeted phishing emails, using information freely offered up by users, in order to gain access to the mobile device and thence corporate systems.

"Mobile device security is both a quantity and quality problem. While the quantity of mobile threats may not be on par with other threats, the quality of the spoils for attackers can be that much richer," writes Danny Akacki, Sr. technical account manager at Gigamon on the company's blog.

The problem is made worse if devices are used for both business and personal use with more opportunities for sensitive data to fall into the wrong hands.

So what can organizations do to protect themselves? Gigamon's report suggests limiting the use of mobile devices for sensitive business tasks, monitoring network traffic carefully, using mobile device management solutions, multi-factor authentication and having strong policies in place. It also suggests continuous education of users to ensure security issues are kept in mind.

You can read more and get the full report on the Gigamon blog.

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