Most of the companies do not test their mobile apps for security or privacy susceptibilities, where there is a possibility of leaking sensitive data to the unauthorized parties. A mobile device management solution is essential, which allows one to monitor every device used within the enterprise.
How to protect Data?
A person should know where the files are being stored and who has the access to them. With the onset of outsourcing and the prevalence of mobile work, more documents are appearing than before. Therefore a mobile strategy needs to incorporate some sort of document control solution that ensures files are in control even when they leave the firewall. That way, even a piece of malicious software tries to steal authenticated sensitive files, they will be safe.
Manage the applications:
The poorly-made third-party applications have a tendency to leak the data. Some of them even go far to collect the data from the devices on which they are installed. A person’s own applications could potentially gather personal data if they are not properly blocked off. It is important to pack all the sensitive applications.
Create awareness among the Employees:
People tend to remain innocent where security is concerned. The more we create awareness them on the threats they might face from the security point of view, the less likely they are to compromise their organization.
At the same time, it is essential to communicate with them. Ensure that they are satisfied with the app selection available to them. Creating awareness is not only the important thing. An annoyed employee can cause just as much as damage as n ignorant one, sometimes more.
What is a Mobilescope?
Mobilescope is a new service that hopes to change that by letting a mobile user examine all the information that apps transfer, and alerting that person when sensitive information, such as that person’s name or e-mail address is transferred. It is generally a platform-agnostic interception tool that one can use on their android, iOS, and Blackberry or Windows phone.
Once a person has signed up for a particular device, the Mobilescope is accessed through a website, not as an app installed onto a device. The folks can use the sites to see logs of the data transferred by the apps on their device. It can catch the apps that perform a task such as copying a person’s address to a remote server.
How do Mobilescope works?
When a person signs up for Mobilescope, a configuration file is sent to that person’s device. Once the installation is finished, this file causes all future Internet Traffic to be routed through a Mobilescope server so that it can examine the data that comes and goes to the device and its apps. The Smartphones are designed in such a way that it should be compatible with Virtual Private Networks, the encrypted communications that are some enterprises use to keep corporate private data. This design does not cause any delay to a person’s connection because the users are connected with a server.
Mobilescope can even analyze data that is sent over the most common types of secure connection used by the apps, similar to that of the banking websites, by intercepting the certificates involved. The service cannot decrypt other data, but few apps bother to use the encryption service. Data collected by Mobilescope is discarded after each session of use and is only stored on the person’s mobile device.
Mobile Apps need to be secure:
The location-related data makes up about forty percent of leaks on Android and about thirty percent on iOS. PII (Personal Identifiable Information) leakage through a mobile app can include a person’s contact number or email addresses. The amount of PII data that is leaked extremely small in android devices and nearly one percent on iOS devices but that leak can still leave a device open to a malicious infection.
Folks need to Trust their Apps:
A company that offers SAAS (Security-As-A-Service) is an important consideration for the business decision-makers. The issue is not that mobile apps should have data protection features but the organizations don’t take the potential for leaked data into account.
A report says that about forty percent of the companies do not test their mobile apps for security susceptibilities. A complete fifty percent of the companies allocated no amount for security vulnerability testing. The organizations must take steps to protect users and the broader network infrastructure and data assets. The MDM policies should be applied strictly and educate employees about app security in an effort to save any kind of data loss or security breach.
According to the Survey:
The report says that the enterprises are challenged by a large number of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) devices penetrating the workplace along with the consumer’s complicated apps from third-party sources. The report calls on the industries to enforce stricter mobile device management programs to protect users and network assets.
The study says that while it monitoring twenty million Android app transactions for one-quarter, about half the percent resulted in some level of private data becoming available to the unauthorized person. About fifty-eight percent of Android transaction leaks were tied to exposure to a Smartphone’s IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number and IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) number.
The data can be influenced for tracking the device and creating targeted attacks. In these cases, the user data are shared with servers or ad-servers in clear text. About forty percent of Android transaction leaks are tied to the user’s location, including latitude and longitude coordinates.
Less significant is lost data tied to disclosing an Android user’s authenticated information that can give an unauthorized access to a user’s contact number and email address. The type of data given by iOS is not that much severe one. On a sample size of twenty-six million iOS transactions, about one percent resulted in privacy- related information being shared. Most of the data about seventy-three percent are iOS device metadata (data of data).
Another twenty-seven percent of iOS data was location data. About less than one percent of data leaked on iOS devices is personally identifiable information. Of all over the iOS transactions in which privacy-related information is being sent, about five percent resulted from of malicious infections.
The leaking data, no matter what the mobile OS, can be leveraged for more sophisticated attacks. The personal data can be coupled with location data can be easily influenced in a well-crafted phishing attack.
Many hardware identifiers like MAC, IMSI, UDID etc are unique all over the world and do not change over the lifetime of a device, the collection of such IDs allows for both tracking and physical device association. These identifiers can be oppressed by a range of attacks. The attack can include a GSM air interface attack where a hacker is armed with a remote SIM card rooting.
About forty percent of the enterprises do not scan apps they develop in-house for security vulnerabilities. And fifty percent of those in-house developers do not allocate any amount to security vulnerability testing.
The exact location of any person is highly valuable in this world, where lots of spying and spoofing are done; such information can lead to massive compromise or targeted attacks. The contact numbers and email addresses are the quickest way to reach an individual. And can be influenced for spamming and phishing attacks.
