6 Tips to Improve Mobile Security

Cyber criminals are becoming big believers in “smaller is better.” As cyber crime grows more sophisticated, it's shifting focus from servers in large enterprises to a much smaller target: mobile devices in small and medium sized businesses. In 2014, 60% of all targeted attacks struck small and medium-sized organizations, with a new mobile malware piece becoming available every 17.6 seconds on Android devices. The reason? Cyber criminals have realized that many smaller organizations don't have the time or resources to adequately protect their devices, especially the many smartphones, tablets, and 2-in-1s that BYOD policies have brought into the workplace so what's a cost conscious business to do? Combined with well-tested strategies a number of new tools exist that can help keep your devices secure without busting your budget. Here are 6 tips for improving your mobile security.

1. Restrict device access

On average, individuals store around $37,438 in digital assets on their devices, including digital media, professional information, and personal correspondence and photos. While passwords and PINs are important first defenses against unauthorized access to those digital assets, many users fail to use secure passwords and PINs, opting instead for something easy to remember—and easy to hack. Biometric login and password saving can help increase security while also making access easier by eliminating the need to remember complicated passwords or logins for every program you use throughout the workday.

2. Use encryption

Mobile devices are very convenient, until you lose them. Users are 15 times more likely to lose a mobile phone than a notebook PC, making data loss a big threat to businesses of any size. While passwords can keep unauthorized users at bay for a time, they don't always stand up to persistent attacks. A more robust solution is to enable full disk encryption, so that everything on the device remains protected even if the device itself is lost.

3. Always use secure services

As convenient as it is to use cloud services like Dropbox and Google Mail at work, it's important to note that many of these services were never meant to meet business security standards. Even so, a full 87% of senior managers admit to regularly uploading proprietary work files to a personal email or cloud account. Using these personal services for business data can have serious consequences, with the average total cost of a cloud data breach increasing 23% over the past two years to $3.79 million. The easiest way to stay safe is to not use these services at all, but that policy can be difficult to enforce at work.

4. Enforce security standards

For small and medium sized business, mobile device attacks increased 26% and 30% in 2014. With cyber-attacks on the rise, smart businesses can't rely on ad-hoc standards. They need to ensure those standards are being implemented by every employee in order to stay secure.

5. Keep your systems updated

2014 had an all time high of 24 discovered zero-day vulnerabilities (security holes that were exploited by hackers before they were discovered by device makers or antivirus developers). To stay on top of these increasingly sophisticated and determined hackers, systems and software on your mobile devices need to be as up to date as possible at all times. One key method for staying up-to-date is ensuring users have enabled automatic software updates.

6. Train your staff (and yourself)

Symantec notes that, in 2014, 70% of social media scams were shared not through infected systems, but manually by users who'd been fooled into spreading the scams themselves. To keep your workplace and mobile devices secure, your employees should be educated on how to spot an online scam. Always be wary of free offers for gadgets, gift cards, and airline tickets or for invitations to join dating and webcam sites. Remember that if you are asked to fill out a survey or sign up for a service using a credit card in order to get the free gift or service, you are most likely being scammed.

At Dallas Network Services, we work with a large variety of businesses based in Dallas and Fort Worth (DFW) and the surrounding area such as Addison, Plano, Carrollton, Denton, Richardson, Garland and beyond. We also extend our reach outside the area to include all Texas and other states. We provide on premise server support including Microsoft Exchange as well as Cloud computing services and hosted solutions. We specialize project services, network support, desktop support and voice over IP (VoIP) business phones. Our fully managed IT services will improve your business reliability as well as your bottom line. Contact us today at www.dallasnetworkservices.com chat or call 214-696-6630.  #DNS #dallasnetworkservices #managedIT #ITmanagment #techsupport #hacker #cybersecurity #ITconsulting #MSP