Securing access to business resources has always been of high priority for admins and IT teams. In the wake of the pandemic, workforces are more distributed than ever before, and 76 percent of global office workers state that they would like to work from home even when the pandemic is over.
The use of mobile devices to accomplish work tasks has become the new normal, and remote workers often connect to unknown, shared, or public networks to accomplish these tasks, necessitating corporate resources to be securely accessible from anywhere. This shift in paradigm has admins working to ensure maximum data security while also maintaining employee productivity. However, achieving this introduces a few risks that compromise network security.
What are these risks?
Unauthorized access
Granting open access to corporate resources over the internet can act as an invitation for cyberattacks, like distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, that the company is ill-prepared for. In such attacks, hackers overwhelm the server with more traffic than it can handle, aiming to render it unserviceable and leading to a rather costly server downtime.
Possibility of data leaks
Communicating through unsecure networks isn’t always the safest, and can lead to potential data leaks due to eavesdropping attacks. A good example of this would be a man-in-the-middle attack, where an outsider inserts themselves into the conversation between the server and the employee, unknown to either party. The outsider can then monitor traffic, and even alter the data transmitted.
With strict data compliance regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in effect, organizations have to be cautious when dealing with these risks, and it’s best to take every measure possible to avoid them.
So, what can be done?
A virtual private network (VPN) allows admins to tackle the above issues by ensuring only authorized users are granted access to corporate resources. Further, the sensitive corporate data sent and received by the employees, when connected to the VPN, is securely routed through an encrypted tunnel, minimizing DDOS attacks and preventing potential data leaks.
Admins need to make sure that employees connect to the VPN whenever they’re accessing corporate data on their mobile devices, but this is easier said than done; there are a few more challenges they can run into.
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Configuring the VPN on a mixed fleet of mobile devices, both corporate-owned and employee-owned, can prove to be arduous for the admin.
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Organizations have to ensure that employees enable their VPN before accessing corporate resources on any of their mobile devices, be it a smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
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Inevitable network failures can cause the connection to the VPN to fail, and there is no way to assure that the VPN connection is re-established when the connection resumes. Employees are often unaware that they are no longer connected to the VPN, and this can threaten the security of the sensitive information in transit.
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Employees likely use their devices for personal purposes as well. What happens if all of several employees’ traffic, both corporate and personal, is routed through the company’s VPN server? It’s the admin’s responsibility to make sure that the VPN server isn’t overloaded at any time.
Here’s how Mobile Device Manager Plus can help
Mobile Device Manager Plus is a comprehensive enterprise mobility management solution that helps admins securely manage both corporate and employee-owned mobile devices across Apple, Android, Windows, and Chrome. With Mobile Device Manager Plus, bulk configuring and distributing the necessary VPN credentials on managed mobile devices is simplified.
These configurations eliminate the need for employees to manually enter their VPN credentials every time they want to establish a connection. Features like per-app VPN and VPN on-demand ensure that a VPN connection is automatically established whenever employees access a corporate app or URL, so admins no longer have to worry about unstable connections threatening data security, or non-corporate traffic taking up the VPN server bandwidth.
Still wondering if Mobile Device Manager Plus is the right solution for your organization? Check out the 30-day free trial of Mobile Device Manager Plus!
