Mobile devices have become an important aspect of our personal and professional lives. In today’s networked world, we increasingly rely on mobile devices to access sensitive data on corporate networks. While the benefits of mobile devices is continually expanding, so are the risks.
According to Symantec, the top risks to mobile devices are as follows:
While the threats are real and increasing, there are ways to decrease risk and realize the full potential that mobile devices offer to employees and organizations as a whole. The following strategies will help your organization embrace this technology while managing risk:
- Develop strong corporate information security policies, and apply them to mobile devices. For example, if your organization requires that passwords for accessing the corporate network be 12 characters, including numbers, upper and lowercase letters, and at least one symbol, then, the same should be true for mobile devices.
- Utilize mobile device management tools to enroll devices in your enterprise environment, configure and update device settings over-the-air, enforce security policies, secure mobile access to corporate resources, and remotely lock and wipe managed devices.
- Implement a cyber security awareness program that includes the acceptable uses and vulnerabilities associated with mobile devices.
- Ensure that mobile devices access corporate resources with secure authorization, transmission, encryption, and hierarchical privilege controls to manage access to sensitive data.
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