30 Days of Compliance Q&As #26: How Do I Deal With Mobile Malware?

Business World Computing UK recently posted Top Network Security Issues 2014 by Matt Hines. The article discusses the top 5 areas that are going to see the most security issues in organization. One issue they discuss is:

Mobility Instability

For years we had experts telling us that the rise of mobile malware would be a huge problem very soon … and then nothing happened. Now everyone is attempting to address the great tide of handheld attacks that have finally arrived and this should refocus efforts on keeping internal controls validated to halt attack escalation once handhelds inevitably get owned.

Read the entire article here: Top Network Security Issues 2014.

At AccelOps, we help companies deal with this issue every day.

Mobile instability can be greatly reduced by monitoring the activity of the mobile devices. If a device is owned, provisioned and controlled by your organization then you are a little safer. You know what is installed and running on the device. But with the notion of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) you need to monitor those devices a little closer.

AccelOps has the ability to create watchlists, which are lists of things that matched or did not match some criteria. For example, a device is not under your control or the device did not match your naming convention. Then you can have specific rules that look more closely at those devices.

Someone brings an iPhone and connects to your Wi-Fi network. That device was not one of your devices so it is added to the watchlist. If that device then begins scanning your network or trying to connect to systems it shouldn’t you can now we alerted in real-time. Your users might now even know that malware might be on their device. For example, the latest version of a game might contain a piece of software created to steal data from your network once it is connected to the corporate network. A watchlist allows you to put greater scrutiny on new or unknown devices to reduce your risk.

By using a solution that not only does security but also performance, availability and change monitoring and alerting, your organization can have the highest level of awareness to safeguard and protect your organization’s information and customers. If you would like to learn more about AccelOps please contact us for a demo or a 30-day trial of our software.