The mobile threat landscape is a dynamic ecosystem in perpetual motion. Cybercriminals are constantly renewing their attack techniques to access valuable data, challenging the capabilities of traditional mobile security solutions. Mobile threat defense technology was conceived to tackle the onslaught of cyberthreats targeting enterprise mobility that standard security solutions have failed to address. Some security experts even note that emerging mobile threats can only be countered with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, both of which are essential to any reliable protection strategy.

Data Exfiltration Is a Serious Threat

Pradeo’s most recent mobile security report found that 59 percent of Android and 42 percent of iOS applications exfiltrate the data they manipulate. Most mobile applications that leak data are not malicious, as they don’t feature any malware. They operate by silently collecting as much data as they can and sending that data over networks, sometimes to unverified servers. The harmful aspect of these apps resides in the fact that they seem perfectly safe to the security checks of marketplaces such as Google Play and App Store, and as a result, these platforms feature many such apps.

Zero-Day Malware Is Growing at a Fast Pace

There are two main categories of malware: the type that has a recognizable viral signature that is included in virus databases, and the zero-day type that features new, uncategorized behaviors. Researchers at Pradeo observed a 92 percent increase in the amount of zero-day malware detected between January and June 2018 on the mobile devices the company secures, compared to a 1 percent increase in known malware. These figures demonstrate how threat actors are constantly renewing their efforts with new techniques to overcome existing security measures.

Enhance Your Mobile Threat Defense With AI

Mobile threats such as leaky apps and zero-day malware are growing both in number and severity. Antivirus and score-based technologies can no longer detect these threats because they rely on viral databases and risk estimations, respectively, without being able to clearly identify behaviors.

To protect their data, organizations need mobile security solutions that automatically replicate the accuracy of manual analysis on a large scale. To precisely determine the legitimacy of certain behaviors, it’s essential to take into consideration the context and to correlate it with security facts. Nowadays, only AI has the capacity to enable a mobile threat defense solution with this level of precision by putting machine learning and deep learning into practice. With these capabilities, undeniable inferences can be drawn to efficiently counter current and upcoming threats targeting enterprise mobility.

Read the 2018 Mobile Security Report from Pradeo