Mobile devices continue to be the target of attack at increasing rates. There is a relatively simple explanation for this – in a typical organization today, 60% of the endpoints containing or accessing enterprise data are mobile; the majority of which do not have any security protection today. It is no longer a matter of if or when an enterprise’s mobile endpoints are at risk–they already are.
Mobile devices contain or have access to the same information as traditional endpoints. While billions of dollars have been spent protecting and securing traditional endpoints, very little has been invested to protect mobile device endpoints. Attackers work on the same model as any other business: where do they get the greatest return on their investment of time and resources. As a result, mobile devices have become a favorite attack target and that trend is not likely to decrease any time soon.
As the worldwide leader in mobile threat defense (MTD) protecting millions of enterprise mobile endpoints around the world, we are in a unique leadership position to deliver insight into how mobile endpoints are being targeted through device, network, app and phishing tactics.
Data from our “State of Enterprise Mobile Security” Report for the first half of 2019 confirms enterprises are not only being threatened and attacked, most organizations have little to no knowledge or visibility of the compromise.
In the report, we define “threats” are conditions that increase the likelihood of a device being attacked or enable attacks to be made more efficiently. “Attacks” are actual attacks against mobile endpoints.
Our report – which is available for free – contains data from more than 45 million anonymized endpoints across hundreds of customers. This is the webinar we conducted, discussing the findings.
State of Enterprise Mobile Security Report Key Findings
Device Threats and Attacks
- Mobile OS vendors created patches for 440 security vulnerabilities.
- Twenty seven percent of enterprise mobile endpoints were exposed to device threats.
- The majority of malicious profiles (68 percent) were considered “high-risk,” meaning they had elevated access that could lead to data exfiltration or full compromise.
Network Threats and Attacks
- One third of enterprise mobile endpoints encountered risky networks, and almost one out of 10 were exposed to network attacks.
- Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks were 93 percent of network threats and 86 percent of all threats.
- The top five countries with the highest number of network attacks are: Republic of Korea, Japan, United States, China and the United Kingdom.
Applications Threats and Attacks
- Zimperium’s machine learning-based engine, z9, detected thousands of malicious apps that were not in VirusTotal or any other repository.
- Forty five percent of all attacks detected on Android devices were malicious apps versus less than one percent of those detected on iOS. Ninety eight percent of all detected malicious apps were on Android.
- Five percent of enterprise mobile endpoints had sideloaded apps from sources outside the authorized and vetted Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Thirty six percent of the Android devices had sideloaded apps versus two percent of iOS ones.
- Seventy percent of iOS apps had advertising capabilities and iOS Bluetooth beacon usage exploded to 69 percent of apps (from 38 percent at the beginning of 2019).
- Twenty four percent of iOS apps passed sensitive information over the web unencrypted.
