Verizon’s newest survey reveals that while most companies know about the security vulnerabilities posed by their own mobile devices, very few are doing anything about it. According to the survey, barely one out of every ten companies employed all four basic protections: data encryption, password changes, security system testing, and data access restriction that are recommended by experts.
Lucian Constantin tells us why one out every three organizations suffered a data breach in 2018 because of a mobile device in this report published in CSO Online:
“Mobile devices are prone to many of the same attacks as other devices,” Verizon said in its Mobile Security Index 2019 report. “Most phishing attacks and badly coded sites can affect them; mobile users might even be more vulnerable. And there are also mobile-specific exploits—like malicious apps and rogue wireless hotspots.”
“And yet again this year, we found that many companies are failing to protect their mobile devices,” the company said. “And we’re not talking about some almost-impossible-to-achieve gold standard. We’re talking about companies failing to meet even a basic level of preparedness.”
This is not due to a lack of awareness, as over 80 percent of respondents said their companies were at risk from mobile threats and 69 said those risks have increased over the past year. At the same time over two-thirds of respondents said they are less confident in the security of their organization’s mobile devices compared to other systems.
Almost half of respondents admitted that their organizations sacrificed mobile security to get the job done faster and nearly half of those that cut corners experienced a mobile-related security compromise. Meanwhile, less than 25 percent of those that didn’t sacrifice security for speed and profit had a mobile-related compromise.
Around 60 percent of incidents were described as major and 40 percent as major with lasting repercussions. Over half resulted in the loss of data and 58 percent also led to the compromise of other devices.
