What is Bring Your Own Device (BYOD, also know as Bring Your Own Technology or BYOT) and why should your company be concerned about it? BYOD refers to the trend of letting your employees use mobile devices they own personally to access your company’s information and applications.

While it’s often convenient for both employers and their employees, BYOD may put your company at greater risk of being vulnerable to ransomware or other malware.

What Makes Mobile Devices So Risky?

When it comes to your company’s own systems, security is in your hands. This isn’t the case with personally owned mobile devices.

Obviously, a cell phone, tablet, or laptop owned by your employee is going to be easier to physically steal. But even if the device itself isn’t stolen, it can often be more easily hacked. This potentially allows hackers access to your systems. From that point, they may be able to lock down your files and information and hold them for ransom.

Physical theft isn’t the only risk you face. With personally owned mobile devices, you also have to rely on your employees to keep all security patches up-to-date and rely on them not to download vulnerable applications. This is difficult for even well-meaning employees.

Due to constantly increasing competition for victims among ransomware creators, mobile smartphone apps make a tempting choice. According to Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report from April 2016, Android smartphone users are a main target of attack. However, Apple devices are not immune. Attacks on Apple devices rose considerably in 2015. According to the report, attackers are using newer, more sophisticated techniques to profit from their victims. For example, there were cases where phone ransomware was observed as it started to encrypt files on phones.

Mitigating the Risk for Mobile Devices

There are several features that should be included in your company’s security policies to protect against mobile malware. Some of these are:

• Make sure access to mobile devices is password protected, including biometrics if possible.
• Update regularly. Updates often contain features designed to protect against newly uncovered vulnerabilities.
• Install and make use of remote “find and wipe” tools, in case devices are lost or stolen.
• Download and install apps only from trusted sources.
• Pay close attention to which permissions apps require. Consider noting in your security policies which permissions are allowed and which are not.
• Make use of on-device data encryption.
• Do not allow your employees to jailbreak or root devices that they will use with your system.

Increased Risks Expected in the Future

In spite of all precautions, the current trend is for the risks associated with mobile devices to increase in the near future and possibly beyond. The increasing use of smartphones and all other mobile devices is simply too tempting for cyber criminals to pass up.

If you would like to find out more information on how to protect yourself and stay ahead of the risk then please follow our link to find out about our special event we our hosting to specifically go over security in the IT world.

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As mobile devices continue to infiltrate organizations, the demand for secure solutions becomes critical. By 2017, the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and enterprise mobility market is expected to reach upwards of $181 billion. The introduction of these new devices influence the way businesses collaborate, communicate and innovate. In order to maintain their status as a market leader, organizations must stay ahead of the quickly evolving technology trends and develop ways to securely integrate them into day-to-day operations. Here’s a breakdown of a few of the mobile trends that are quickly becoming hot topics for 2014:

Predicting the potential risks of wearable technology

According to research firm Juniper, 2014 is the year that wearable technology goes mainstream. Last year, Google launched its highly anticipated glasses and Samsung rolled out a smart watch, while other big tech players including Apple gear up to introduce a whole new breed of wearable tech. On the horizon: smart contact lenses, LED sweaters that can sense your mood and even fingernails rigged with individual radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, allowing the wearer to perform a variety of tasks normally completed with a card.

A recent Fortinet survey, which was conducted across 20 countries and surveyed 3,200 21-32 year old employees, found that 16 percent of respondents agreed that they would use wearable technologies in work or for work purposes as soon as they become available and 33 percent as soon as their price is affordable. Juniper cautions that privacy will be an ongoing issue with wearable tech, as cameras go everywhere – including the workplace. IT teams will face similar challenges and risks as with mobile devices, the most important of which is protecting corporate data.

Stepping up security with a multi-layered approach

As more business processes are extended to mobile, many organizations are finding uses for both mobile device management (MDM) and containerization, either for different deployments or on the same device. Organizations with highly sensitive proprietary content or in strictly regulated industries may prefer the added security that MDM and containerization on the same device provides. A corporate container deployed on a managed device provides an extra barrier to access corporate content. Users are required to enter both a device-level passcode and a container-level passcode, and administrators have both device-level controls and application-level controls that enable app-to-app collaboration with other managed and secure applications within the container.

This approach also creates a sense of segmentation between work and play for end users, bringing a dual-persona feel to managed devices by isolating corporate content inside a secure container. MDM and containerization are often thought of as mutually exclusive security solutions, but today’s most innovative organizations are taking a layered approach to security by using the two in conjunction.

Adopting app scanning to protect organizations and end-users

As employees increasingly demand more apps for business, IT administrators must block malicious applications and certify that internal and third-party applications meet their organization’s security standards. Administrators need to protect organizations from publicly available malicious applications, risks that come with internal and third-party apps, and address concerns around apps accessing personal data on employee-owned devices. In order to address these concerns, organizations must integrate app scanning into their business platform.

With app scanning, IT administrators can identify common app risks, such as access to privacy settings, insecure network connections, malicious code and more. By scanning the applications, administrators can identify potential privacy, behavior, and design and programming risks. This information gives IT administrators the ability to assess whether an application is safe for business use or blacklist the application if it does not meet the minimum security standard, empowering them to take action and eliminate current and future risks.

When it comes to adopting any new technology, the less time organizations spend worrying about security, the more they can focus on driving core business strategies. Therefore, understanding technology trends and predicting their impact is vital to any organization’s mobility strategy.