Outsmarting security threats to your smartphone

For many of us, we use our own devices, such as tablets, smartphones, and even personal computers, in the course of carrying out tasks for our jobs every day.

Learn more about how to develop ethical and functional mobile apps through the use of Privacy by Design concepts here.

This could occur whether or not your company has a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy. In this day and age, organisations are not only facing a whole host of cyber threats to their company systems and devices, but also the personal technology we all carry around and use daily.

As a recent article in CPO Magazine pointed out, many of the technical security measures found on computers – firewalls, antivirus, and encryption – are rarely implemented on mobile devices such as smartphones.

Find out the top Work from Home (WFH) risks and the best practices that organisations should implement to close the gaps here.

The cyber threats, in today’s landscape, are many and varied in their sophistication and danger level, including attacks via mobile apps, malware, phishing schemes and more.

Agencies from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia this week issued a joint cybersecurity advisory titled “2021 Trends Show Increased Globalized Threat of Ransomware” and highlighted some key trends across the three territories.

These included trends such as more cooperation between ransomware groups in sharing victim information, more diverse means of extorting money in their attacks, more “professionalism” in the field with more cybercriminals’ services available for hire, and an increasing impact in cybercriminals targeting the cloud, managed service providers, industrial processes, and the software supply chain.

Last year, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) took steps to help organisations cope with rising cyber threats, including launching toolkits to help raise awareness of cybersecurity, and publishing e-handbooks to highlight scenarios of cyber attacks, data breaches and computer misuse, to advise organisations on best practices and reporting procedures.

According to the CSA, there was a 154% growth of ransomware incidents in 2020 in Singapore.

Despite a cyber landscape fraught with danger from such bad actors, many organisations continue to allow, or require, their employees to use their own electronic devices in the workplace, or while working from home.

Click here to learn how cyber insurance can assist organisations in their road to recovery after suffering a breach.

New Threats, New Solutions

However, just as the cyber criminals are capable of diversifying their attacks, security experts are also capable of innovating and finding new solutions to thwart cyber threats.

One such example is for employers and their IT teams to modify the smartphones of their employees, by replacing the operating systems with a mobile security platform. This enables an organisation’s IT administrator to have greater control over risky activities and to better safeguard the data security of the smartphones.

Learn more about how to develop ethical and functional mobile apps through the use of Privacy by Design concepts here.

Such measures could also prevent malware from wreaking havoc and exploiting ways to spread. In a nutshell, this solution means complete control over employee devices while enabling use of productive features and functions.

And it may mean that workers with smartphones secured in such a way would no longer need to carry two (or more) mobile phones – one for work, one for personal use – each day, while boosting safety, security and productivity.