How The Mobile Workforce Can Fight Back Against Data Theft

The advent of the cloud has done wonders for the mobile workforce. Employees and executives alike can access information and complete tasks from their smartphones and tablets virtually anywhere with an internet connection.

The advent of the cloud has also done wonders for cyberthieves, with corporate data migrating and being duplicated into the cloud in order to support the mobile workforce’s access needs.

This is the type of problem Software-as-a-Service firm SaberLogic set out to address with its newest tool, announced Tuesday (Jan. 3). Dubbed Bezlio, the SaaS solution enables a mobile workforce to access corporate data that remains behind a company’s firewall and within a corporate network.

“What we saw was a trend where people were looking to utilize the cloud, but for a long time, there was no clear path to actually use it,” explained Brian Ellis, sales manager at SaberLogic, in an interview with PYMNTS. “Companies had more in the way of a mobile workforce, but the existing solutions that were out there were something along the lines of procures where you would sync your data out to the cloud. And that data was always stale, it was real-only and it potentially introduced some new security concerns.”

With a focus on smaller companies and with a strong presence in the B2B sector of services firms like manufacturers, SaberLogic aimed to ensure data security for its clients, Ellis explained — something that many of its customers aren’t as concerned with as they perhaps should be.

“Especially in the smaller sector, where they’re hoping for more of what we like to call ‘security through obscurity,’” he said, “they feel like, if they’re small enough, they’re not going to get targeted.”

In reality, though, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Researchers in 2015 found that about 60 percent of cyberattacks that occurred in 2014 hit small and medium-sized enterprises. Still, separate analysis released last year revealed that 80 percent of SMEs operate without an adequate response plan to a cyberattack.

This type of ignorance to cyberthreats, explained Ellis, means smaller companies aren’t keeping up with security measures. They don’t stay up-to-date on things like security patches, for instance. So, when corporate data gets duplicated into the cloud, it becomes a prime target for cyberthieves.

“These hackers out there are casting very wide nets,” he said. “Really, that kind of obscurity doesn’t work the same way, because the tools [cyberthieves use] have gotten better. Security is something that’s not as focused on — a lot of people look at it more like a pain to deal with.”

A Mobile Workforce

Today, however, Ellis warned that small companies can no longer afford to ignore cyberthreats, especially as the rise in mobile workforces continues to grow taller.

“Especially on the manufacturing side of things, we’re seeing a lot more of a mobile workforce,” he said. “That’s being powered by the technology — the smartphones and tablets. Companies are really looking for a way to leverage those.”

SaberLogic’s new tool, Bezlio, aims to safeguard the data accessed via mobile device, and the company acknowledged in its announcement that doing so can have broad implications and offer many use cases for the enterprise. One of the ways the solution is already in use, the firm said, is by connecting into accounting, ERP and finance applications, like Salesforce, enabling mobile workers to access financial data on-the-go.

Ellis explained that this can be useful for B2B companies that need to manage their own corporate clients. For instance, vendors can access accounts receivable information to understand whether a client owes money or gain insight into their purchasing habits before a salesperson goes into his or her next meeting. The tool can also aid in the deployment of vendor portals, he added, to support buyer-supplier communication.

The use cases are broad as companies continue to explore remote access to corporate data in an effort to support their in-the-field workers. But just as the demand for this type of data access has increased, so has the ability for cyberattackers to break into cloud networks and steal that remotely stored data.

Of course, these attackers are also targeting the corporate networks themselves, so no data trove can be completely safeguarded (yet). But, as Ellis noted, preventing a data breach from happening in the first place as more companies make themselves vulnerable is critical to remaining secure.

“When somebody gets through the front door, the rest of the inside locks are a lot easier to get through,” he warned.