Today’s advancing technology lets employees and team members take their work with them wherever they might go, enabling them to work remotely from home, on the road, or while visiting other company locations. Mobility certainly serves to improve functionality and productivity, but as more mobile devices are used, this mobility creates a larger risk of security breaches.
The risk is there, whether it is simply one or two mobile phones connected to your company network or a whole fleet of mobile devices under an enterprise mobility management system. Typically, you only hear about the large data breaches that affect large companies and compromise hundreds of thousands of personal consumer records and information. In actuality, data breaches occur nearly every day, affecting companies of all types, both large and small.
What’s happening in Australia’s cyberspace?
In the first half of 2016 alone, 974 data breaches in Australia were publicly disclosed, affecting a total of 554 million data records. When you consider the data breaches that went undetected or unreported, you will discover that the number jumps much higher.
So, if you go to work and find out that there has been a data breach, there are several things for you to consider. One of these is to promptly notify any individual at risk of serious harm. Then, notify OIAC about any concerns you or your organisation have concerning a breach of data privacy.
Adding security to your mobile devices
Security first starts with you and your employees:
- First, employees need to be trained to create secure passwords for their mobile devices and never allow unauthorised users to have access to those devices.
- Second, when outside the office, at home, or in the field, mobile devices must always be kept secure and never left unattended, where they could be easily stolen.
- And third, work involving sensitive information should never be conducted using a public network. Experienced hackers can easily access and retrieve private data by hijacking the signal.
Improving security with an enterprise mobility system
For organisations with fleets of mobile communications devices (phones, tablets, telemetry devices etc.), an enterprise mobility system is ideal for integrating and automating all aspects of mobile communications. Most importantly, an advanced enterprise mobility system, such Bluewater, a cloud software system, can greatly improve security.
With a wide range of flexible security settings for users and management, team leaders and business owners can easily add and remove users, change user passwords, allow user-based permissions and authorizations, and much more. Additionally, with the ability to view mobile fleet data in real-time, you can easily keep an eye on any potential security threats and issues, plus do your best to prevent any data breaches.
