In a week when a recording of a call between high-ranking officials from Bundeswehr, the German Ministry of Defence, discussing war efforts in Ukraine was intercepted and leaked by Russian media, the security of communication channels on mobile devices has been thrust into the spotlight.
According to Reuters, Germany's Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said that one participant on this high-level military call on Ukraine had mistakenly joined via a non-secure line.
While Bundeswehr would have strict security standards and protocols in place, sometimes, whether employees are overseas or having trouble accessing the network, for whatever reason, high-level protocols can be ignored. This begs the question, how easy is it for your people to work outside your secure communications protocols? Could they join a call on an unsecured line?
Human error the weakest link in mobile security
As the Bundeswehr case shows, the weakest link in any security system is most often human error. So, it’s important to reinforce employee training in cybersecurity best practices, including the importance of secure communication and the potential risks involved in sharing sensitive information. This ongoing training and education should also include recognising phishing emails, using strong passwords, and avoiding suspicious websites.
Given what’s a stake, it might be a good time to perform a security audit to review your company’s communication channels and systems to identify any potential vulnerabilities or weaknesses. If you don’t have the resources to do this internally, you can enlist the help of a managed services provider like imei to cover all bases.
We can help with the following:
- Analysing data encryption protocols to see if your people can send confidential data to an unsecured location.
- Whether your team’s devices are fully patched and upgraded to the latest versions
- Use and enforcement of access control and industry-standard password policies. For access to your corporate network from mobile devices, it’s important for employees to use strong passwords and change them regularly.
- Use of two-factor authentication to verify the identity of users as a baseline requirement.
- Prohibiting the use of public Wi-Fi to log into sensitive file-sharing services. Employees using an open Wi-Fi network to send sensitive emails or log on to a corporate account can put the information at risk.
Secure your communication channels on mobile
imei can help you with enterprise mobility security and maximising data protection and threat management capabilities with managed services, covering:
- Mobile device management for preventing unauthorised access to corporate data by ensuring compliance with corporate mobile policies. Also allows remote locking and wiping of a compromised device.
- Mobile Threat Detection for preventing, detecting, remediating, and improving overall security practices for your company’s mobile fleet and applications.
- Mobile Threat Management for reinforcing unified endpoint management capability and adding security to unmanaged devices.
- Mobile Information Security for setting up protocols to ensure the right data can always be accessed by the right people, when and where it is required.
For more on the security of communication channels on mobile devices, please take a minute or two to review imei’s “A CEO’s Guide to Mobile Data Security" and get in touch with our team to discuss boosting your security defences on mobile.
