Introduction to Mobile security system:
Due to the evolution of smartphones, the data management has now shifted from personal computer to handy device mobile phones. There is a need for us to look up its security measures. As we know about the modern innovations in the smartphones, where the apps installed in the system does wonder in the business management. Smartphones assist the employee in the organization for planning, organizing and communicating their work stream for optimum results. Hence, there is a great threat in managing the data pertaining to the business while smartphones play a major role in business management. The mobile phones face the same threats similar to PC but different measures have to be taken to safeguard from various attacks. In this article, we will get a clear picture of smartphone threats and steps to overcome it wisely. Here we are going to discuss the latest technology, which helps us to get rid of these attacks.
Elements of Mobile security:
The data, which has been transmitted through a mobile network, should carry three elements in it. They are:
- Confidentiality
- Integrity
- Availability
The data should be confidential in order to maintain the high level of security. The data should not be changed intentionally or unintentionally until it reaches the destination. It should be available to the authorized user whenever it is required for processing.
The organization has to predict the threats while deploying mobile solution for their business. They have to forecast the threats and plan threat models before practicing business using smartphones. Threat modeling helps the organization to find the solution for the high level of mobile security and safeguard from attacks before the situation becomes out of control. Some of the predicted threats or dangers on mobile phones are as follows:
- There is no physical security for the device as it can be lost anywhere around the space since it is used for both personal and professional and there is no control over the location.
- Usage of fake trust policies built-in mobile devices for the company task. Certain mobiles might have fewer security features, which is vulnerable to hacker attacks.
- Usage of fewer security networks for accessing company’s data from public places.
- Installing vulnerable applications for personal use, which might attack our stored data, related to business processing.
- Hackers might attack our device when we connect with other devices for transmitting information. Remote accessing of data increases the vulnerability of attacks.
- Care should be taken while browsing unprotected content on the website.
- GPS helps to track out the location of the device, which might help the hackers to predict our location easily.
The threats have been classified as:
- Device based threats: Since the device is always connected to the network, there is a possibility for an unauthorized user to access the data, which is stored in our device. There is a software threat, which indulges in rooting the device, which will lead to data sharing.
- Network based threats: As the device is always connected to the internet, which might lead to accessing data through rogue access points, Wi-Fi sniffing tools, man in the middle (MITM) attacks.
- User based threats: Users attempting to access malicious applications and contents online. When the user lacks knowledge, regarding the data security leads to the greatest threat.
Some of the solutions suggested to the organization to get rid of above-discussed threats to the mobile security system are as follows:
- The organization should frame their policy in such a way it restricts the employee and their mobile applications to access the data in the company’s hardware.
- The automated system should be designed in order to monitor and indicate when there is a violation of the policy, which was framed for security purposes.
- Entertaining sandbox technology to avoid malware attacking the data stored in the device. The mobile restricts the entry of any type of application to avoid malware. The data is stored as an isolated set of entries within the sandbox protecting from attacks.
- The data communication between the organization and the employee should adopt strong encryption policy.
- At the time of mobile theft or lost data scrubbing method can be followed in order to wipe out the stored data in the device. Data scrubbing is a method in which the data are erased by itself up to a certain number of wrong authentication attempts.
- Organization should adopt strong authentication policies while giving accessing to the users.
- It should enable the device to have an automatic restriction in usage of a certain application.
- Educate the employee should use trusted networks while accessing the data in public places
- The employee should be trained to access the trusted sites for their needs.
Therefore by enforcing limited usage of company’s data to the employee might reduce the data attack in the organization.
CONCLUSION:
It is high time to think about the mobile security since most of the business processing is done through mobile networks. Mobile operating systems like android, IOS were designed in such a way to mitigate the attacks and increase the integrity of data communication over the mobile networks. Thus, organization and the employee should be well aware of the vulnerabilities of data before handling them through the network to achieve a high level of data security using smartphones.