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Mobile security and Working Remotely
Mobile devices and securing your network
In today’s business world with the ever-increasing need for flexibility and the ability to allow a worker to be able to work remotely, the use of a mobile device such as tablets and cellphones has also increased. The increased productivity that mobile devices have helped with is nice, but it is not without its own inherent risks. These devices have given increased flexibility that a conventional desktop or terminal device just can’t compete with, but because of that flexibility, it means they leave the safe controlled environments of company-controlled networks.
As a result, this leaves these devices vulnerable to accessing unsafe Wi-Fi networks and encountering a virus that can infect your networks. The next issue that these devices are not always company property especial in the case of when an employee accesses their company email through their phone, in these cases, it is best to educate employees on the possible dangers of this and implementing policies for remote work and mobile device use. There are a variety of solutions that will help increase security, for example, having company-owned devices that employees use on remote work.
Company-owned devices are better for remote work because they are own by the company can have mobile device management software that allows your company to track its location and have better control of what can be accessed through them, this helps minimize data loss and corruption. This issue of mobile device security is an ever-growing concern and was highlighted recently in an academic paper from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia which did a global study showed that the organization was not doing enough or taking steps fast enough. This topic of Mobile device security is a topic of discussion at this year’s International Conference on Information systems being held in Germany in December.
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)? Securing Remote Devices
The Largest hurdle to contend with for Remote devices costs, although the best option for having employees work remotely is to provide devices and install an appropriate level of security such as anti-virus and mobile device management software this can be very costly and time-consuming to do for all employees that could possibly work remotely. This leaves organizations to allow the employee to use their own devices to access their networks to complete time-sensitive jobs. Although most people tend to have anti-virus on their laptops, they tend to forget to do the same for their mobile devices. Most cellular phones run Android today clocking in at around 87% and informing your employees of the steps they must take to secure their phones and the common forms of attacks that are present. If employees intend to use their personal devices for remote work it is best for them to be informed, because even something as simple as answering email can affect your networks.
Google has been ever improving on stricter rules and regulations for phone apps but there are still some that can infect phones then secretly access data found on the phone or use the phone to infect other systems. The major risk for mobile devices that are not owned by your organization is that they will have other thing installed and each unknown app installed on these devices present another source of possible infecting or breach to your networks.
Next, there is also an issue in terms of privacy and how much your organization needs to know and if your policy requires employees to install security and tracking software how their information is stored and who has accessed it becomes an issue. Although allowing employees to use personal devices to access company sensitive information to do remote work is attractive, they pose their own array of issues and each new uncontrolled device is just another access point to your network to become breached. For more information on a mobile device and remote work, security feels free to read these few articles, one on BYOD vs Corporate owned and this one on both working remotely and BYOD’s
Contact Powerland to learn more about what we can do to help you with Mobile Device Management and Mobile Device Security, by contacting us online using the contact form below or by emailing us at marketing@powerland.ca who will happily redirect you to the correct Knowledgeable Security representative.