Securing mobile devices and the data they access is a huge challenge. This is because of three key technology trends happening today:
Mobile apps have become the primary way that data is accessed and stored.
Mobile apps account for over half of internet use, according to a 2016 study from Andreessen Horowitz. Enterprises, however, rarely know what apps are being used on an employee’s mobile device and whether that app is collecting sensitive information.
Individual employees have tremendous control over their mobile environment.
They have freedom to choose whatever apps they would like to use to get their work done. This isn’t inherently a bad thing — every company wants productive employees — but it can inadvertently put corporate data at risk if an employee chooses the wrong app..
Mobile apps creators range from Forbes 500 companies to a few guys in a garage.
The problem is, app developers of any size do not know your company’s specific data protection sensitivities, government compliance regulations, industry standards, or data sovereignty laws. The apps are not always built to meet these sensitivities and may leak corporate data despite being otherwise “benign.”
Mobile apps introduce a new layer of complexity to an enterprise’s security strategy as IT now has to protect against everything from malicious apps to risky app behaviors.
Announcing Lookout Mobile Endpoint Security for App Risks
Enterprises need visibility across the entire spectrum of risk so that they can be both mobile and secure. An enterprise’s attack surface has now expanded from web applications to cloud and mobile applications, as well as web APIs. This means that malicious attacks have many new entry points, but there are also non-malicious, risky behaviors that can happen across this new landscape that put corporate data in harm’s way.
This is why we’re excited to announce the expansion of Lookout Mobile Endpoint Security for App Risks to provide organizations with visibility into risky mobile app behaviors on their network. This visibility helps organizations maintain compliance with their internal data security policies and take action against such suspicious app behaviors as accessing geolocation or sending contact information to an external server that may directly contradict corporate policy.
Lookout Mobile Endpoint Security for App Risks enables IT teams to:
- Gain real-time visibility into your enterprise mobile app ecosystem: Through a centralized dashboard integrated into Mobile Endpoint Security console, your team now gets a holistic view of the mobile apps on the enterprise network. The dashboard provides information regarding app prevalence and flags potential app risks. For example, the dashboard shows the percentage of apps on the network that send contact information externally.
- Drill down into specific app capabilities: Within the console, administrators can examine specific applications within their mobile fleet to better understand the app’s functionality, capabilities, behaviors, and network traffic.
- Create custom policies to protect enterprise data: The actual level of risk a specific app presents to an enterprise will depend on individual corporate policies. Lookout has enabled enterprises to create their own custom policies for understanding app risk. For example, an administrator can create a policy to display all apps on the network that both access contacts and connect to a third party cloud service. Furthermore, administrators can save those filters as policies and assign a threat level to violations of that policy in order to take action to protect corporate data.
Lookout Mobile Endpoint Security for App Risks complements our existing threat protection to provide a holistic mobile security solution for enterprises across the full spectrum of mobile security risks. Lookout is uniquely able to provide this capability because of our industry-leading 100 million global sensors that, together, feed up to 90,000 apps into our Lookout Security Cloud every day, contributing to a dataset of over 30 million apps. Lookout Mobile Endpoint Security for App Risks leverages this dataset to enable customers to better understand the capabilities and risky behaviors of the apps on their employees’ mobile devices. With this customizable visibility into the mobile apps present on employees’ devices, organizations can enforce specific corporate policies.
Announcing Lookout Advisory Services
We’re also excited to formally announce two new Lookout Advisory Services that provide cutting-edge mobile threat intelligence:
- Lookout Application Security Assessment: a comprehensive, white-glove app analysis by the Lookout security research team that, paired with app insights from our unique dataset of analyzed apps, enables enterprises to ensure their own apps don’t pose a security risk.
- Lookout Threat Advisory Service: a monthly report that highlights global mobile threats and trends based on insights from Lookout’s 100 million global sensors.It provides actionable information to security analysts to inform their cyberthreat protection strategies and enhance protection levels across their organization. This service includes direct conversations with Lookout security researchers for personalized deep dives into how these threats affect specific business processes.
App Risk protection and Lookout Advisory Services are both available as part of Lookout Mobile Endpoint Security, sold through the Lookout Channel Partner Program, consisting of more than 58 value-added resellers and distributors worldwide. To learn more about Lookout Mobile Endpoint Security visit https://www.lookout.com/products/mobile-endpoint-security. To learn more about Lookout’s advisory services, visit https://www.lookout.com/services.
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