BlackBerry and Samsung are working together to improve protection

by James · November 30, 2022

The pandemic rise of remote workers has caused mobile and BYOD (bring your own device) usage to increase across enterprise organizations and small businesses. Predictably, it didn’t take long for cybercriminals to cash in on the business mobility boom.

With approximately 5.3 billion mobile device users now roaming the planet – more than 90% relying on “smart” or internet-enabled devices – the preponderance of thinly protected mobile assets has created a “moveable feast” for online predators.

These devices are increasingly targeted by mobile-optimized attacks, including adware, banking trojans, malware and remote access trojans (RATs) – all of which are increasing in frequency, sophistication and cost to victims.

Android devices are being targeted

Attacks against Android™ devices are occurring on a significant scale. Here are some of the latest numbers:

97% of organizations have struggled with mobile malware threats that exploit various attack vectors.

Banking malware threats on Android devices increased by 80% in 2021.

Last year, adware accounted for 42% of new mobile malware worldwide.

47% of free Android antivirus (AV) programs cannot effectively detect malware. Are BYOD employees dependent on free AV programs?

Mobile malware apps that provide backdoors to phones infiltrate via SMS or text messages. Some cybercriminals pay monthly fees of $5,000 to rent weapon apps that allow them to steal access credentials and sensitive data.

Mobile threat defense (MTD) strategies help disrupt the pace and severity of malware attacks. This includes improving the overall security hygiene of the organization’s mobile users, and embracing modern mobile solutions that go beyond traditional security and enterprise mobility management (EMM).

BlackBerry and Samsung: collaborate to offer improved MTD

BlackBerry and Samsung teamed up in 2014 to offer high-security enterprise mobility management (EMM) based on BlackBerry UEM (unified endpoint management) and Samsung Knox, a proprietary security and management framework pre-installed on most Samsung mobile devices. To combat the rise of attacks on mobile devices, BlackBerry is the first mobile threat defense (MTD) cybersecurity platform to offer Knox Enhanced Attestation services for Samsung Galaxy devices.

Now, the partnership has evolved to expand into leading endpoint protection, via CylancePROTECT Mobile™ unique artificial intelligence (AI) powered endpoint security equipped with Knox Enhanced Attestation for Samsung mobile devices.

CylancePROTECT Mobile is an advanced MTD solution that uses the power of AI with a prevent-first approach. It detects malware infections, prevents URL phishing attacks, and verifies application and device integrity. CylancePROTECT Mobile gets ahead of cyberattacks as part of a zero-trust approach, blocking cyberattacks before they have a chance to succeed and ensuring mobile devices are safe and secure.

CylancePROTECT Mobile with Knox Enhanced Attestation provides additional tools to ensure the security of Samsung devices with access to corporate information. These tools support the use of Knox Enhanced Attestation periodically to validate the integrity of Samsung devices. Knox Enhanced Attestation is hardware-based and can detect device jailbreak, rooting, OEM unlocking, and IMEI or serial number spoofing, as well as performing application health checks. It not only ensures the current health of Samsung devices, but also provides an overview of whether the device has ever run an unapproved configuration in the past.

Configured by an organization’s IT or security staff using the CylancePROTECT Mobile management console, Knox Enhanced Attestation can help combat these threats. This should be a high priority for organizations that enable employees to use personal devices at work – especially for organizations that provide corporate data access to third parties, such as contractors. The added value that CylancePROTECT mobile provides will significantly reduce the risk of mobile deployment from compromised devices.

In addition to the integration of Knox Enhanced Attestation, CylancePROTECT Mobile offers core features that include:

Mobile threat monitoring at the device, network and application layers detects malware infections without adding SecOps overhead.

Identify security vulnerabilities and potentially malicious activities by monitoring OS updates, system parameters, device configurations and system libraries at the application level.