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In putting together this report, we experienced moments of optimism as well as pessimism. While we were relieved to see positive indicators, like rising investments and awareness of mobile security and the growing adoption of technologies such as SASE to improve remote access security, organizational efforts are still falling short of recommended benchmarks.
In a world where attacks can have devastating impacts on everything from production operations to revenue to reputation and even to people’s health and safety, awareness is simply not enough. Unknown, unmanaged and unmonitored mobile and IoT devices can pose substantial security risks.
Those responsible for securing the critical infrastructure that delivers our food, water, power, transportation, healthcare, emergency services and much more simply cannot take half measures. The potential consequences of a breach at a nuclear power plant or a regional hospital, for example, are simply too grave to ignore.
If people are to trust public services and consumers are to trust companies, organizational and security leaders must do more. They must strive for full visibility into all IoT projects across their organizations. They must enforce consistent standards for mobile security as well as IoT built-in device security, network segmentation and data encryption—everywhere.
They need to teach employees and end users about the dangers of credential theft, the importance of basic security hygiene, and the power of skepticism and situational awareness on an ongoing basis. And they should work tirelessly to build and cultivate a robust cybersecurity culture in their organizations. Anything less than unrelenting protection efforts is too little when the stakes are so high.
And it’s not just about critical infrastructure organizations. Across all industry responses to our survey, similar patterns of mobile and IoT security gaps were present. That means there’s work to do across the board. Public and private organizations must work together to deploy shield after shield, defense after defense, obstacle after obstacle, to foil threat actors attempting to interfere with the immense progress mobile and IoT connectivity delivers.
of critical infrastructure respondents know someone who has had a mobile device or mobile app hacked, compared to 36% of respondents in other industries.
in critical infrastructure say leadership only takes cybersecurity seriously after a breach.
Help protect your business and learn more about mobile security risks at verizon.com/mobilesecurityindex. Or speak with your Verizon Account Representative.