According to a security report released by Verizon Wireless report, over 32% of companies are willing to sacrifice Mobile Security in order to improve their business performance. The 600 respondents who participated in the survey said that this lack of security vigilance is leading to major consequences like data loss or downtime at their respective companies.
The report also doesn’t disappoint those looking for some encouraging stats as over 24% of organizations say they had implemented even the most basic cybersecurity practices. 39% of them said that they maintain a practice of changing all default passwords, while 41% say they use 2-factor authentication on their mobile devices. The Verizon study also discovered that 59% of organizations restrict the apps which their employees can download from the internet to their mobile devices.
Verizon says that healthcare and public sector were most likely to experience a security issue in this year, as 35% of healthcare organizations and 33% of public sector firms said they have been suffering data loss and downtime on a consecutive note from the past 3 years.
Verizon Wireless security report recommends the following tips for protecting the mobile enterprises-
Cut down the risk of malicious applications- Firms should start implementing policies that determine apps which can be downloaded by employees and if possible create a customized app store to make the environment more secure. To make things simple, CTOs and CIOs of organizations can deploy application management software that scans apps for cyber vulnerabilities and alerts and locks those which are tuned to be red flagged.
Device management improvisation- Organizations should ensure that the default passwords of all apps should be changed after their first use. They should also ensure that they deploy mobile endpoint security and threat detection to all devices and implement Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM)
Educating employees is vital- No matter how much your investment in the software tools, in the end, they need to be used by employees. But if the employees are unaware of what is happening in the cyber world and what their role in their company when it comes to security management, it can produce more troubles. So, organizations should provide regular security training and test employee awareness annually. They should also keep a track of employee access to systems and data and create an incident response team to help contain or cut down the damage to a minimum when a security breach occurs.
