Playing around with your new tablet? Wait a minute, before you flaunt your new gadget, download Apps (applications) left, right and centre, and use it in public places clogged with wi-fi networks. You may end up infecting the stylish device with viruses and exposing your businesses to serious risk.

As BYOD (bring your own device) concept is fast catching up, the onus is on enterprises and individuals to keep their tablets secure.

“As tablets cross over from personal to business devices, they are being rapidly adopted in enterprises, including Indian businesses, for productivity gains they offer. In fact, several tablet makers have begun to offer business variants of their best-selling tablets,” Mr Shantanu Ghosh, Vice-President and Managing Director (India Product Operations) of Symantec, said.

Mr Shantanu felt that movement of data over the cloud would pose another challenge. Users are capable of accessing the same data across all their devices. “It no longer makes sense for enterprises to simply focus on securing endpoints. Protecting the data itself, no matter which device it ends up on, with information protection technologies, is now more critical than ever,” he said.

The IDC pegged the number of tablets that will be shipped this year will go up by 17 per cent, from 53.5 million to 62.5 million.

Mr Jagannath Patnaik, Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab (South Asia), warned that tablets can easily fall victim to a variety of physical and Internet threats.

Anti-theft protection

“Real-time antivirus protection with automatic virus-scanning of downloaded apps and cloud-enabled Internet threat protection is needed to address these threats. Anti-theft protection allows you to easily find, lock or wipe your missing tablet if it’s lost or stolen. You can even take a ‘mug shot’ of the thief using some security solutions,” he said.

Do’s and don’ts

Escan, a security solutions firm, asks the users to reconfigure network access for remote and wireless connections and implement control through regular password renewal and two-factor authentication. Enterprise users must carry out IT auditing, penetration testing and review role-based access privileges to check against eavesdropping and pilferage of information. 

“Beware of downloading fake apps. It is better to scan them before adding them to the device. While using wi-fi networks, one should access websites that have SSL encryption. Also, they should switch off their Bluetooth device when not in use,” it said.

kurmanath@thehindu.co.in

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