Bob Stevens, vice president of federal systems at San Francisco-based mobile security firm Lookout, has said an April 2017 study released by the Department of Homeland Security indicates that threats posed by federal agencies’ use of smartphones and other mobile devices to government data are present across all areas of the mobile ecosystem.
Stevens wrote that technology leaders in the federal government should be cognizant of a “spectrum of mobile risk†in order to protect agencies’ devices from security vulnerabilities and other threats.
He said such a spectrum not only covers malware and other application-based threats but also threats across web and content, network and device vectors.
He called on security professionals to develop “mobile-specific security†platforms and introduce changes to government’s risk management approach in order to address potential risks associated with the use of mobile devices.
Stevens also urged agencies to evaluate every component of the “mobile risk matrix†and create a strategy to handle mobile risks based on the organization’s security environment.
“Mobile is part of every agency’s infrastructure, and mobile devices are endpoints that need to be treated with the same priority as any other potential attack surface,†he noted.
