Several types of attacks, including malicious URLs sent via SMS text and downloaded malicious apps, work by exploiting mobile devices and users. Furthermore, people often forego critical security on their devices because they believe their smartphones wouldn’t be of interest to cybercriminals.
“They don’t see it as that much of a problem, not realizing that attackers don’t care about their personal conversations. They care about their credentials, how they can take them and use them on other systems,” says Willis.
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What Tools Are Available to Protect Against Mobile Cyberattacks?
As institutions move to bolster their protection, new measures are being adopted. Among the solutions they’re turning to is mobile device management, an all-encompassing security tool that enables IT teams to define, control and execute security frameworks for anything connected to a network. MDM can automate monitoring of a range of mobile devices, making it especially flexible to accommodate the bring-your-own-device policies that pervade campuses.
Because a certain amount of foresight goes into setting up MDM, it also promotes a healthy approach to assessing how an institution should move forward with security.
“MDM is like a roadmap,” says Willis. “It helps to do a security assessment, identify gaps and then start projects to fill the gaps.”
Mobile threat defense tools — an important component of MDM — are designed to detect threats to an organization’s data through mobile devices and protect them from those threats. Notably, MTDs can employ technologies such as artificial intelligence to proactively monitor for threats, whether that’s an unpatched vulnerability, malicious activity, poor device configuration or something else. Given the number of devices on campus now, this type of automation is critical to ensure higher education institutions stay safe, without draining IT resources.