Mobile Devices Will Be Biggest Business Security Threat in 2014

Question Analyze the emerging security threats presented within the Security Threat Report 2014 report. Analyze the major threats to mobile devices, and suggest at least two (2) methods to mitigate the concerns and make the devices more secure from an organizational standpoint. Justify your response. Determine whether or not you believe that the mobile device threats are the most critical and disturbing of all of the security threats presented in the articles. Provide a rationale for your response. Answer: Introduction Today in the field of information technology, various new changes and improvements have done. Now this field has become so advanced, and various new and innovative technologies have introduced. Major advancements that have seen in information technology regard to web and mobile applications. But with the advancement of technology, issues regarding security and privacy in the web and mobile applications are also increasing. Various vulnerable attacks and its vulnerable effects have seen by users of mobile and web applications such as hacking, phishing, and denial of service attack, etc. Therefore, the purpose of making this report is to discuss that how mobile devices will be biggest business security threat in 2014. Discussion This is an important segment of this report and we will discuss emerging security threats those are mentioned in Security Threat Report 2014. Emerging Security Threats With analysis about emerging security threats, we got to know that mobile devices have become huge security threats and causing risk for mobile users and companies. According to study by the Ponemon Institute, it is revealed by end-point management and security that 75 percent of IT security professionals said that mobile devices will pose the biggest threat for the security of company in 2014. Besides this, 68 percent respondents also said that mobile devices have been targeted by malware. According to the study on this topic, it is found that advanced persistent threats (APTs) is a big concerning factor regarding security of mobile devices. It occurs in a situation when cybercriminal tries to access a network of a company for stealing and damaging data. It has become an essential concern for IT. According to statistical data 39 percent are surveyed with APTs and it is also known targeted attacks. According to analysis, it is also noticed that 40 percent of the security professional s are affected by this targeted attacks. Spear phishing emails attack is considered to be a vulnerable attack in security threats of mobile in 2014 and it is an entry attack. Other essential attack is about malware attack, and it is analyzed that 50 percent of malware attacks are conducted in last three years. Due to these reasons malware attacks are contributing to rising cost of an operating system. In this way, issues regarding security and privacy of mobile and web applications are increasing and putting vulnerable impact over users of these applications. Spamming, denial of service attacks and other harmful scripting attacks like SQL injection, etc. are also considered to be harmful. The mitigation of these problems has become important to prevent mobile and web applications from damage. The reason behind hackers and phishers attacks are the deficiency in security maintenance by security experts. (Brooks, 2013) Major threats to mobile devices and its mitigation The major threats to mobile devices are mobile phishing and ransomware, use of the infected mobile device with other devices and cryptography mining attacks. These attacks are so much vulnerable. These attacks are actually like PC Scams and performed by hackers of social engineering. Damages data with these attacks is harmful to recover. That is mitigation of these attacks is very necessary. Mitigation of Mobile Devices Threats To resolve these attacks advanced security tools and techniques can be used. Firewall, anti-virus, cryptography and other programming tools will be useful to control these attacks. Among these tools, we prefer cryptography and Anti-virus to use by users to resolve mobile devices threats. These devices are beneficial because cryptography encrypts the information into a secure form that is difficult to understand by unauthorized users and anti-virus restricts un-wanted data to enter into mobile devices without scanning. (Musthaler, 2016) Are Mobile Device Threats most critical? It is right that above discussed mobile devices threats are critical because through these attacks, hackers try to access information of an authorized user without his/her permission such as Advanced Persistence Threats (APTs). Besides this, malware attacks are also harmful because this attack direct put vulnerable impact over a database and its information. Due to malware attack whole data can be damaged and if that infected data will be copied into another device then that device will also be corrupted. Due to these reasons we say that these attacks must be considered seriously by users and mitigation of these attacks is necessary. Most Alarming Threat As we have discussed above various mobile based vulnerable attacks. But besides these attacks the most alarming attack that we consider is Denial of Service Attacks. Denial of service attacks, that are known as DDoS Attack. These kinds of attacks can restrict the services for internet users. This attack is also a violation of web servers. According to analysis, it is found that in last few years there are various cases of Harassment and Dos Attacks have been experienced by internet users. DDos attack is a virus that spreads among the whole network and due to this attack all options of internet access have become disable, and no user can collect any information from web server and its database. This is a harmful impact for both mobile and web users. The main reason for selecting this attack is that due to this attack, users those are connected with a server cannot access anything from a database. It is not happened in other attacks. The mitigation from this attack has become important and mitigation consists of following activities: (Collett, 2016) The use of purpose-built device or service that are able inspects inbound traffic will be the best solution for DDoS attack. Procedures for mitigation of DDoS attack must be included to business continuity and disaster recovery plan of business. If you notice any unwanted transaction from your potential customer the try to lock out those transactions. This is happened due to attack. Conclusion After this whole discussion, we can say that security of mobile device is required to be improved and must be more efficient. Above discussed attacks are not easy to handle. Hackers are now thinking about new ideas for hacking confidential information of users. Therefore, mitigation tools those we have discussed above must be implemented at user and developers extent. References Brooks, (2013). Mobile Devices Will Be Biggest Business Security Threat in 2014. Business News Daily. Retrieved 29 May 2016, from https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5670-mobile-devices-will-be-biggest-business-security-threat-in-2014.html Musthaler, L. (2016). Best practices to mitigate DDoS attacks. Network World. Retrieved 29 May 2016, from https://www.networkworld.com/article/2162683/infrastructure-management/best-practices-to-mitigate-ddos-attacks.html Collett, S. (2016). Five new threats to your mobile device security. CSO Online. Retrieved 29 May 2016, from https://www.csoonline.com/article/2157785/data-protection/five-new-threats-to-your-mobile-device-security.html