Organizations must consider user education a high priority

Nilesh Jain
Vice President, Southeast Asia and India, Trend Micro

“The risks of implementing BYOD are not just limited to device theft or loss but in securing the valuable enterprise data and apps contained in and accessed by multiple devices outside the network. Targeted attacks and exploiting vulnerabilities are a key security issue for organizations.

As mobile devices form a large portion of an organization’s BYOD ecosystem, organizations must be aware of the risks they face from malicious mobile apps downloaded by the users of these devices. Companies should consider providing endpoint security solutions that feature app reputation technology that can detect whether certain apps are safe to use.

While phishing is not just a BYOD problem, it becomes an especially significant threat in a BYOD ecosystem due to the tendency of organizations to focus on the security of the devices within their own network. Cybercriminals often start with the weakest link in the security chain—end users. Phishing attacks can be a very effective way to trick employees into thinking that a malicious email or message is actually a legitimate one. Organizations should make user education a high priority. Employees should be taught to detect phishing attacks and briefed on what to do in case they receive suspicious messages or emails.

At any point along the way, your financial data, customer information, intellectual property, or trade secrets could be lost or stolen. To avoid the embarrassment, reputation damage, regulatory fines, and revenue loss, today’s enterprises must be able to identify, track, and secure all confidential data from multiple points within the organization and in the cloud, without impacting employee productivity and performance. It is very important to keep ahead of the latest threats and protect your critical data with ongoing threat prevention and analysis.

The future threat landscape requires AI-powered protection that leverages expert rules and machine learning. AI and ML work in tandem – AI leverages ML capabilities to increase its intelligence and evolve – these systems can be considerably advantageous when it comes to identifying and working to guard against the latest and broad range of security threats including spam, ransomware, exploits, targeted attacks and business email compromise (BEC).”