The most disperse and difficult security challenge for CISOs is ensuring that the thousands of endpoints in their organization are secure. Laptops created an enormous boost to productivity but came with security risks. Just as security professionals solved the problem, an entirely new endpoint arrived that had some threats that were similar, but others that were entirely new, different and increased organizational risk. This new endpoint came in the form of a phone or tablet and had access to or contained the same information as traditional laptop or desktop endpoints. Today, roughly 60% of an organization’s endpoints are mobile with very little if any security. You wouldn’t consider leaving laptop/desktop computers unprotected, yet thousands of mobile endpoints accessing organization information do so with little security.
As it turns out, there are 7 primary mobile endpoint security issues CISOs face. The first three are similar to traditional endpoints (but need to be secured differently) and four are unique to mobile: