5 September 2023
Mastering a Mobile-First Security Strategy: 5 Key Principles + Case Study
In this day and age, mobile-powered initiatives are critical to profitability, productivity, and competitiveness for many organizations. Mobile devices and apps are how customers interact with businesses and how employees access resources, collaborate, and work.
This reliance on mobile devices has several implications:
- A variety of devices are accessing corporate data, including employee-owned mobile phones and other devices that aren’t managed by corporate IT teams.
- The number of mobile apps offered to employees by an organization continues to increase, together with the number and type of apps that are active on employee and customer devices.
- Mobile threats continue to rise in both volume and sophistication.
- Regulations pertaining to application and user data continue to be rigorous and difficult to adhere to.
“How do organizations realize the potential of mobile-powered initiatives without jeopardizing the integrity of the business?”
The answer lies in implementing a Mobile-First Security Strategy.
Five Key Principles of a Mobile-First Security Strategy
A Mobile-First Security Strategy accounts for all of the complexities and realities of mobile devices, apps, users, and business models. It supports and enables mobile-powered initiatives and enhances productivity.
The five key principles of a scalable, and effective mobile-first security strategy are as follows:
1. Prioritize and assess risk as close to the point of entry as possible
Organizations need to prioritize securing mobile-powered business initiatives across all mobile devices and apps.
2. Assess vulnerabilities for all entry points and gain complete visibility
Gain complete visibility of your mobile ecosystem and risk level. Assess vulnerabilities automatically and remediate them without slowing down productivity. Establish safeguards that are auditable, measurable, and insurable.
3. Enhance detection and response for mobile
Detect anomalies and prioritize remediations based on contextual intelligence to fix the most critical issues first. Integrate security across the device and application lifecycle, provide risk-based response, and enable zero trust assessment of mobile endpoints.
4. Begin the autonomous journey
Respond dynamically to ever-changing threats and mobile ecosystems. Automatically isolate compromised devices and develop a security posture that is proactive, robust, and scalable.
5. Minimize risk compliance failures
Maintain compliance with legislation, data sovereignty, and privacy requirements while respecting employees’ boundaries.
A Real-World Case Study
Problem
A major global banking institution had a restrictive mobile security strategy where all devices, regardless of corporate-owned or BYOD, were required to be enrolled into UEM for device management. This caused friction with BYOD end users. Due to the lack of visibility to vulnerability and risk, only a small subset of handset vendors were approved for BYOD use.
Solution
By leveraging mobile threat defense (Key Principle #1), the organization gained better visibility into its risk posture and enabled the adoption of a broader range of device models & manufacturers. This allowed the bank to accelerate its BYOD strategy while providing real-time insights into the risks on those devices (Key Principles #2 and #3). It also gave them the ability to provide and deliver automated responses (Key Principle #4) without compromising security.
They were also able to provide runtime security insight to their consumer mobile application (Key Principles #1, #2, and #3), as many of their customers were being targeted for scams/fraud via social engineering and malicious app installation. With the implementation of security telemetry inside their consumer banking app, they were able to identify risks and automatically respond to them within the app (Key Principle #4). All of this was accomplished while ensuring that they meet compliance and data sovereignty requirements (Key Principle #5).
As a result, the bank has been able to achieve the vision of its mobile-powered initiative without security impacts.
Does your organization need a Mobile-First Security Strategy? Contact us here to see how we can help.
For the latest insights on mobile security, check out our partner Zimperium’s 2023 Global Mobile Threat Report.
