Understand the mobile cyber threat and how to mitigate it

As agencies work to modernize their IT systems and improve cybersecurity under congressional and Trump administration mandate, there is much they can do to ensu...

Tom Temin

May 21, 2018 9:14 am

< a min read

Mobile computing has brought undeniable benefits to federal agencies. Functions as diverse as anti-terrorism to farm inspection have become more agile and effective thanks to growth in mobile capabilities.

But mobile has its own cybersecurity challenges. Chief among these is mobile phishing, the use of deceptive emails and messages using networks external to the agency designed to obtain sensitive information. A prime example is the Dark Caracal scheme, uncovered this year by Lookout and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and aimed at Android devices.

As agencies work to modernize their IT systems and improve cybersecurity under congressional and Trump administration mandate, there is much they can do to ensure better mobile security. In this video, Bob Stevens, Lookout’s vice president for the public sector and Kristen Todt, managing partner of Liberty Group Ventures, outline the mobile security situation and offer practical insight for getting it under control.

Mobile Security and Mobile Phishing

[Dark Caracal] got onto the device through phishing. And once they’re on the device there are an unlimited amount of things they can do, like look at your text messages, your emails, turn on your speaker phone, turn on your camera. It becomes a really good surveillance device for the bad guys.”

Bob Stevens

Vice President, Public Sector, Lookout

The State of Affairs in Government

Almost every application on your mobile device uses the cloud. So you’ve to to ensure not only is the device secure but also your cloud is secure.

Bob Stevens

Vice President, Public Sector, Lookout

The Future of Mobile Security

We tend to put out innovation outpacing security...It’s important that we are aligning the security, and I think mobile devices are going to represent the need for that more than any other functionality that we’ve seen.