How To Protect Your Business Network With Mobile Device Security

The COVID-19 pandemic has permanently altered the way we get our work done: not only do working professionals now do their jobs in a largely remote capacity, but they also use more mobile devices than ever before. This isn’t much of a surprise considering that the digital transformation of the workplace requires that employees connect from their homes and public locations to use their businesses’ assets. In this article, we’ll discuss mobile security for businesses and why it is more important for employees.

While the explosion of remote work has granted working professionals a significant degree of freedom, it also exposes them – and their companies – to data breaches and cyber attacks that compromise sensitive and valuable enterprise assets. Fortunately for the remote working world, though, VPNs can make a large positive impact when it comes to safeguarding mobile security for the business networks of their users. To that end, let’s review the reasons why mobile security for business devices opens corporate networks up to cyber risks as well as how VPNs can strengthen the security of these devices.

How Mobile Security For Business Risks Increaseing

It’s pretty clear that mobile devices make the daily lives of working professionals easier; devices like laptops as well as smartphones and tablets make it more than viable for employees to work from their homes as well as from public places like airports, cafes, and even international locations. This level of freedom comes with a catch, though, since the mobile devices that employees use need to somehow connect to a corporate network to grant access to an organization’s resources. 

Cybercriminal Threats For Businesses

In other words, the greater the availability of an enterprise’s network becomes, the easier it is for cybercriminals to exploit that availability for malicious gain. These threats come in different forms, but they all typically have one thing in common: they often target mobile devices that use public WiFi connections. 

From the growing threat of ransomware to the perennial risk of phishing attacks, cyber-attacks have a greater chance of success when they go after typically unprotected mobile devices connected to a corporate network via a public internet connection. And unfortunately for businesses both large and small, the rate at which cybercriminals execute their attacks doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

In fact, research conducted last year indicates that businesses of all sizes are coming under fire from an equal amount of attacks: one in every four employees belonging to both big and small businesses has been targeted at some point by malicious third parties who are intent on compromising the data or mobile security for business networks. 

Additionally, one in every three companies has fallen victim to cyber-attacks carried out with the intent of compromising sensitive organizational data by targeting mobile devices. Therefore, organizations need a way to prevent bad actors from installing software programs on the mobile security for business networks of their employees and consequently avoid the huge consequences that come with large-scale breaches of corporate data.

Improve Mobile Devices Security With A Business VPN

There’s no doubt that cyber-attacks that threaten the mobile security of business networks are serious threats that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Luckily for small and large organizations with lots of employees working remotely, though, an enterprise VPN solution can largely mitigate the risks that malicious cybercriminals pose to the integrity of their data.

With an enterprise VPN, organizations can ensure that their employees can more securely access their internal and cloud-based assets through the power of encryption. Enterprise VPN solutions, rather than establishing an internet connection with the help of an internet service provider (ISP), instead use encryption to create a sort of “tunnel” that runs between a business’s digital resources and the mobile device that an employee is using. Enterprise VPNs can even encrypt the internet connections that employees establish with their mobile devices on public WiFi networks, largely reducing the chances of working professionals falling prey to common ransomware and phishing attacks that target unprotected mobile devices.

Unlike conventional VPNs, enterprise VPN solutions are cloud-based and don’t require any hardware installation. Whereas traditional VPNs tend to increase the labor placed on the shoulders of information technology professionals who need to install VPN programs on an enterprise’s network infrastructure, enterprise VPNs are maintained by third parties who take care of configuration duties themselves. Plus, the cloud-based connectivity that enterprise VPN solutions offer lets employees establish a private internet connection that comes from their organization from just about anywhere.

That last point is particularly important to mention; traditionally, VPNs establish a protected and private internet connection that comes from the device of a company’s end-user rather than from the company itself. This means that a company can gain visibility into any potential risks to its data assets and more effectively control who accesses what on its corporate network infrastructure. Depending on the type of enterprise VPN solution an organization uses, information technology professionals can also oversee and manage user access to programs situated on a company’s corporate network infrastructure, further mitigating threats to sensitive data and strengthening control access to that data. 

The benefits that come with an enterprise VPN solution don’t stop there: not only can enterprise VPNs help information technology professionals more effectively manage user access to organizational resources that are both internal and cloud-based, but they also can reduce common issues that arise from ISPs such as bandwidth and data throttling. Moreover, an enterprise VPN solution can encrypt the transmission of data from an employee’s mobile device even when they are connected to a public or third-party WiFi network.

Wrapping Up

For many working professionals, the workplace has shifted from a physical environment to a largely digital one. Particularly in recent years as the COVID-19 pandemic has heavily impacted the way employees get their work done; the preponderance of mobile devices in the modern working world has granted people lots of freedom to do their jobs from nearly anywhere, but it’s also given malicious cybercriminals all the more reason to launch attacks against the corporate networks that employees remotely connect to. Mobile security for business networks is very important for remote employees. 

Commonly used mobile devices such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets need to establish an internet connection from an employee’s location to a corporate network so that an employee can access corporate resources. Cybercriminals often take advantage of the public WiFi connections that these mobile devices use to install malicious programs that grant them access to sensitive corporate data. 

Thankfully, enterprise VPN solutions can let organizations and their information technology professionals better manage potential threats to network and mobile security for business and assume a greater amount of control over user access permissions.