Smartphone hacking is prevalent nowadays and is a very profitable business. In fact, there are multimillion-dollar companies that purchase security vulnerabilities and sell them to other organizations that exploit them for their own gain.

The allure of hacking has little to do with the ease of hacking a smartphone; instead, it is because the gains can be astronomical.

In the age of today, data is a valuable currency. Considering the fact that your phone is a crucial source of all your data, access to your phone allows companies to reconstruct and predict how your employees think and act.

There are different types of threat models that your mobile users and employees may have to deal with. Your employees are more likely to face targeted attacks from various sources, along with spray “n” prey scam attacks. The advanced persistent threat is another type of attack that a state-sponsored adversary, or a person with critical information in their phone, needs to prepare for.

Overall, smartphones are devices that openly broadcast your business data. They are also very complex pieces of technology, and thus, using them with complete security can be difficult. Note that the purpose of security is not to make a device impenetrable but to minimize the risk of threats.

Most hackers use multiple tools and integrations to get inside your employees’ mobile devices. If your mobile security has them overusing their resources to get inside your data, then they will find that their efforts are not worthwhile.

Blocking Suspicious or Malicious Apps

Make sure that you are extra careful when reviewing mobile applications. The best practice would be to install an application firewall. Mobile applications can require tons of unnecessary permissions before you try to install them.

Not to mention, there are loads of malicious apps that you will come across on app stores that serve the sole purpose of extracting data from users, even though they may claim to have a different utility. Having a good firewall can prevent this from happening to a large extent.

You can use firewalls in different ways. The first involves reviewing your apps and blacklisting the network access of each individual app. On the other hand, you can also block network access to all of your applications. The best practice is, however, to stop the suspicious application altogether once the firewall flags it.

Biometrics and Two-factor Authentication

Make sure that no one gets access to your information without you knowing about it. To do this, you can resort to encrypting your phone. However, keep in mind that mobile encryption does not protect your phone from malware or remote exploitation.

Instead, it only protects your phone from physical access. This refers to situations when someone steals your phone. In this scenario, you can remotely delete all the data from your phone, regardless of whether you have an iPhone or an Android. However, this will not erase any data from your SD card.

Moreover, if you want to ensure safety further, you must enable two-factor authentication. Your phone is connected to your Google account and Apple ID. Therefore, to secure the data inside your phone, you must strengthen the security of your online accounts.

Strengthening the accounts requires you to set a strong password and also enable two-factor authentication. For 2FA, you can use an application that generates one-time passwords. Google Authenticator is an application that most people rely on.

Avoiding Public Wi-Fi

Make it a habit not to connect to free public Wi-Fi and to also turn off your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when you are not using it.

Automatically connecting to public networks makes your phone vulnerable to malicious invasions that are set up by hackers. The best practice, in this case, would be to use a VPN when you connect to an open network.

Be Prepared!

There are plenty of traps that hackers will set for you so that you can fall for their criminal tactics. These can take the form of malicious applications, public Wi-Fi, and more. It is, therefore, vital that you are aware of all of them and take the necessary steps to maximize protection. Prescient offers a layered security service that focuses on all aspects of security.