The Mobile Threat Defense (MTD)
Mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and many others are easy targets for cyber attacks. Not only do they now contain sensitive business information, but they can also be exploited to gain access to corporate networks.
Organizations can use Mobile Threat Defense (MTD) tools and strategies to ward off these risks as much as possible.
In fact, Mobile Threat Defense refers to the set of tools used to defend mobile devices (private or your organization’s) from external threats.
Mobile Threat Defense for Mobile Defense.
Mobile Threat Defense is among the most relevant in the ecosystem of endpoint protection solutions. It is used to protect mobile devices from cyber threats, through behavioral analysis, machine learning, and intelligence on real-time threats.
Mobile Threat Defense deals with Prevention, Detection and Response for:
- Devices – Monitors threats, system parameters, firmware, and device configurations for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. Continuously scans for suspicious activity, such as unauthorized network access by users through privilege escalation;
- Network – Monitors network traffic for suspicious activity. It can detect invalid certificates and block Man in The Middle attacks;
- Applications – Constantly monitored through behavioral analysis. Application codes are analyzed using machine learning systems to detect and neutralize malicious software. Through isolating applications with anomalous behavior, MTD’s solutions can prevent data leaks, ensuring the security of sensitive information.
Central among its capabilities is behavioral analytics. This uses machine learning algorithms to analyze user behavioral data to identify patterns, trends, anomalies, and other information useful for taking appropriate action and enables people-centered defense to identify unusual employee behavior that could be indicative of a security breach.
Employees’ smartphones: a problem for corporate security
Companies are increasingly aware of the risks posed by mobile devices and apps, yet most users are unaware of the inherent security and privacy risks of their devices.
In particular, employee-owned mobile devices (so-called BYOs) are considered to be the biggest corporate security issue, followed by company-owned devices, ahead of issues related to cloud usage and IoT.
The combination of productivity apps and personal apps installed on every device means that corporate data is constantly exposed, increasing the risk and vulnerabilities for any business.
The risks can be significant, as companies often have limited knowledge and control over the mobile apps that people download and use.
Many rely on antivirus solutions for security focused on the apps themselves, but about two-thirds of the available mobile antivirus solutions have proven ineffective.
Attackers are well aware of mobile as an attack vector. In fact, mobile endpoints are increasingly the easiest target for many attackers.
The main threats to mobile security
Wanting to take a deeper look at the risks, mobile devices suffer from a number of potential malware threats. Some of the most common and impactful include:
Malicious apps and websites – Malware can be installed on mobile devices and access malicious online content.
Mobile ransomware – Mobile ransomware is a type of malicious app that is becoming more common and impactful as sensitive and valuable data is stored on mobile devices.
Phishing – Mobile devices have access to a variety of media (email, SMS, social media, etc.), making them an ideal platform for executing phishing attacks that steal data or convey malicious content.
Man-in-the-Middle Attacks – Mobile communications do not always use secure technologies, making them vulnerable to eavesdropping to eavesdrop or modify data.
Jailbreaking and Rooting – Jailbreaking and rooting provide elevated permissions on a mobile device, allowing an attacker to take a greater range of malicious actions.
OS Exploits – Like any other software, mobile operating systems can contain exploitable vulnerabilities that put them and their users at risk.
The Zero Trust Approach to Security
According to Gartner, current trends see MTD as a key component of Zero Trust Architectures (where “Zero Trust” is based on the belief that trust is a vulnerability and, therefore, security must be defined by strategy).
There is a growing need to protect against not only external attacks but also attacks within the organization, this is because the use of mobile and migration to the cloud has made the workforce more distributed by decentralizing data and applications.
The Zero Trust approach assumes that any human or machine entity requiring access to corporate infrastructure may have been compromised. It thus shifts from a perimeter-based defense to one based on strict authentication at each access point.
A Zero Trust model reduces the attack surface by limiting user access to corporate infrastructure and segmenting the Network. This approach reduces the risk of breaches and the time to detect them. In fact, according to Gartner, by 2025 at least 60 percent of organizations (public and private) will employ the Zero Trust framework.
Best Practices for Mobile Threat Defense
For proper and effective Mobile Threat Defense, it is important to follow best practices that are useful in protecting enterprise mobile devices from attacks and threats.
Among these, first and foremost, it is critical to manage all devices centrally with Mobile Device Management (MDM) or Mobile Application Management (MAM) solutions, which allow them to be monitored and security policies to be applied uniformly. In fact, Advanced MTD solutions protect against malware, phishing and unsafe apps in real-time.
In addition, implementing multifactor authentication (MFA) and secure password management helps prevent unauthorized access, while limiting access to corporate data with the use of VPNs and network segmentation makes it more difficult for an attacker to move within corporate systems.
Next, ensuring that all devices are always up to date reduces the risk of exploiting known vulnerabilities, and finally educating employees (so-called “security awareness”) about the risks of phishing and spyware creates a solid and knowledgeable first line of defense.
Among other things, the most recent trends see MTD as a key component of an Extended Detection and Response (XDR) system. XDR technologies enable organizations to proactively protect themselves from cyber threats by providing unified and integrated data visibility and analysis across all organization’s assets.
TelsyMobileDefender: Telsy’s Mobile Threat Defense
To address this multitude of needs, Telsy offers TelsyMobileDefender.
TelsyMobileDefender is an innovative and comprehensive solution that ensures the monitoring and security of mobile devices in which an Endpoint Management system and a Threat Defense (MTD) module integrated with Telsy’s SIEM and SOC coexist.
You can uniformly manage Apps, APKs, file resources, certificates, notifications, settings and updates through a single administration panel, ensuring smooth and optimal operation across your entire fleet.
Among its features, TelsyMobileDefender provides a web dashboard that allows you to granularly and efficiently govern your fleet of devices and prevent any inappropriate use of them beforehand, a platform that enables you to monitor all events that could lead to possible system security issues, breaking them down by criticality, and all the tools you need to manage, monitor and protect Android and iOS devices from data theft and cyber intrusions.
Contact us at contact@telsy.it to find out more about TelsyMobileDefender.