Malware on remote devices doubles since 2020, 1 in 10 fall prey to mobile phishing

Malware threats seems to be getting more severe with the rising work from home scenario with the number of remote devices that suffered malware installations doubling from 3% in 2020 to 6% in 2021, according to a report by Jamf, an Apple mobile device management company.

Another alarming finding is that 7% of compromised devices continued to access cloud storage services in 2021, while 1 out of 10 people were found to be clicking on phishing links on the enterprise mobile devices.

The study was conducted through a sample of 5 lakh devices across 90 countries for a period of 12 months. The numbers showed a casual posture from enterprises towards security, with 39% allowing devices with known operating system vulnerabilities to operate in a production environment, which was up from 28% in 2020.

Also read: Inside security threats triggered by employees' negligence putting firms at risk 

The report also showed that individuals connecting to risky hotspots had doubled. The results could be attributed to a direct increase in the number of remote devices being deployed in the wake of the work from home situation.  What is worrisome is that only 1% of users had jailbroken or rooted their device in 2021, however, the number of malware attacks had still doubled.

Employees are still the weakest link in the entire security chain, with a Ponemon institute report showing that 56% of incidents experienced by organisations were owed to negligence of employees. 

At the start of the pandemic, many though that the work from home situation would be temporary, but enterprises today are strategizing on a hybrid work model for the long term, which could explain the rise in malware and other doubling of security threats on mobile devices.