Mobile technologies have unquestionably invaded the workplace. Essentially, mobile devices provide numerous gains to businesses and employees by enhancing productivity and work flexibility. On the other hand, ensuring secure access to sensitive information from any mobile device is one of the biggest cybersecurity challenges. In 2020, mobile security threats affected 97% of companies through multiple vectors. Additionally, advanced persistent threat groups like Iran's Rampant Kitten execute sophisticate and elaborate targeted attacks on individual mobile devices to access and steal corporate data.
Despite the increasing security threats, enterprises still encourage employees to access critical digital assets from anywhere using mobile devices. However, such access comes with multiple security risks necessitating companies to implement appropriate solutions. In this regard, most organizations are shifting towards a zero-trust architecture. As the term implies, zero-trust is an approach based on the principle that all devices and users are potential threats. Zero-trust security enables organizations to maintain and monitor the health of networks containing widely distributed endpoints.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted traditional working methods causing a mass shift to remote working. As such, mobile devices have become ingrained as fundamental tools for ensuring business continuity. For example, more than 80% of small business owners rely on mobile devices to drive daily business operations. Besides, experts forecast that the trend will continue, with IDC projecting that 60% of employees will be fully mobile workers by 2024.
On the downside, increased use of mobile devices expands the threat attack surface significantly. For example, Kaspersky detected 25,314 banking Trojans and 3,596 ransomware Trojans in mobile installation packages in the first quarter of 2021. Also, the 2021 Check Point mobile security report revealed the following mobile device threats:
Zero-trust addresses the cybersecurity challenges arising from a perimeter-less work model while enabling access from anywhere, any time. In addition, a zero-trust strategy aims at authenticating multiple users and device attributes before providing access to protected digital assets. For example, to deter threats and unauthorized access; zero-trust models authenticate and validate the network requesting access; identifies and mitigates threats in real-time; determines the context under which a user or device is requesting access; checks mobile app authorization.
That said, organizations need to adhere to the following steps to achieve a robust mobile-centric zero-trust strategy:
Zero-trust extends beyond an identity-only approach used to authenticate devices and users. Many organizations are adopting zero-trust security as it is proving to be a reliable strategy for keeping threats to the business environment at bay. At least 60% of enterprises have accelerated plans to implement mobile-centric zero-trust security. However, with mobility growing rapidly due to remote and hybrid (a mixture of office-based and remote) working models, the attack surface is also growing rapidly. Therefore, attackers identify and exploit security loopholes in mobile devices to access internal networks and exfiltrate data.
The good news, though, is implementing a zero-trust security model has several benefits and positive impacts on securing a network from mobile security threats. These include:
The best approach to protect company data is gaining visibility of devices and users accessing the data. However, it is a challenge for an organization to identify mobile security risks if it has no control over users accessing a network from any location using any device. Implementing zero-trust security provides network visibility of all devices and users, thus eliminating hindrances to risk identification and treatment in unmanaged mobile devices. Additionally, a zero-trust strategy can analyze file-less malware attacks and identify insider threats. Essentially, through increased visibility, a company can monitor risks in mobile endpoints and enable dynamic modification of users and devices that can access data securely.
A zero-trust strategy centered on mobile security enables IT administrators to enforce and adjust access controls for various risk profiles. For example, it is possible to apply multi-factor authentication (MFA) challenges to specific mobile devices. MFA mitigates challenges present in password security by requiring additional authentication items from users and devices before allowing access. Other controls like just-enough-access (JEA) and just-in-time (JIT) access provide access privileges to required data for a certain period. Such risk-adaptive controls protect data while enabling employee productivity and agility.
Zero-trust security comes with essential MDM tools that permit IT admins to set various access policies for remote users using mobile devices. Also, adopting zero-trust platforms that combine MDM solutions and organizational mobile security enhances security across the business environment. The MDM solutions enable seamless management of mobile devices connecting to the corporate network, whereas enterprise mobile security protects against malicious apps and other mobile threats.
A zero-trust strategy approach enforces mandatory security checks in all data or network access requests through threat detection solutions based on multilevel behavioral analysis. The primary aim of eliminating false positives is to precisely comprehend who or what requests network or data access and under which context. As a result, a zero-trust architecture can grant access to valid requests while denying illegitimate ones. In addition, since conditional access is automated to enable real-time processing, zero-trust approaches prevent inconvenient latency that can impact employee productivity or user experience, ensuring operability.