VIEWPOINT
THE IMPORTANCE OF MOBILE SECURITY ALL ENDPOINTS ARE EQUAL, BUT ARE MOBILE ENDPOINTS BEING TREATED THE SAME WAY WITH SECURITY? ASKS BAHAA HUDAIRI, REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR META, LOOKOUT.
A
pple’s iOS and Google’s Android smartphone operating systems and mobile application development have revolutionised the way we work today. It has allowed us to operate on the go, be available anywhere in the world, in any time zone, while offering all manners of convenience and practicality. In fact, by 2022, the global mobile workforce is expected to increase from 1.45 billion to 1.87 billion. Tasks that were traditionally conducted from a desktop can now be done with the swipe of a finger, including checking 44
CXO INSIGHT ME
AUGUST 2020
work emails, downloading documents, accessing files remotely and even hosting conference calls. This technological shift has meant that almost all mobile workers have a smartphone. The fact is that mobile tariff subscriptions account for 97% of Europe’s population. Organisations are seeing increased levels in productivity as a result of this upward mobility and flexible working, which in turn drive corporate mobile management strategies that adopt a BYOD (bring your own device) model. Ultimately, in many organisations, employees are encouraged to use their personal
mobiles, tablets or notebooks to access corporate systems and data, and that flexibility is seen by many as a benefit. Unfortunately, these developments are creating an expanding attack surface, which is leaving enterprise data and services vulnerable. Traditional endpoints and security History dictates that protecting traditional, large form factor endpoints running Windows and Mac OS has been a priority for enterprises. Network perimeter solutions like firewalls or endpoint security products like AV have been employed to mitigate
