Five Mobile Device Security Best Practices

Written by Daniel Burns

     Our phones and mobile devices are one of the most important pieces of technology in our every day lives. They are with us all the time and know practically everything about us. Probably even more so than our best of friends. All that information is personal data that is stored on that device just waiting to be taken. So we must take precautions to protect our personal privacy and our data from prying eyes. Here are five best practices to keep your personal data safe and your phone away from unwanted data lurkers.

     First and most importantly is physical security of your device. You want to make sure that your device is with you at all or most of the time. Especially in public places. Someone can easily take, clone, or steal, your device if it is open and vulnerable to these situations. To combat this, make sure you have a strong passcode or lock screen password of some kind on your device. The standard for years has been 4 digit passcodes but now 6 digit passcodes are becoming the norm just because it increases the amount of combinations needed to unlock the device. Also don’t use a simple code like 1234 or your birth year like 1998. Those can be too easily guessed and especially avoid using any other simple code such as address, significant dates, social security number… Something you will be able to remember but no one else could. Next you will want to enable biometrics on your device to add an extra layer of protection on top of just a simple passcode. Passcodes could easily be seen typed or tapped in public and prying eyes can easily remember a simple code. Using biometrics makes it easy, simple, convenient, and with today’s cool new technology, even fun. There are two main uses of biometrics to unlock your device that are popular on the market today. Fingerprint readers and facial recognition. These are conveniently offered during setup of the device and can be found in your perspective devices settings to enable them. It really feels like the future to just glance at your phone and it just unlocks for you. Avoid using public wifi such as “Starbucks Wifi” when you can, especially when using it for accessing banking or secure and or secret work information. Wifi networks can be spoofed to gather data and you will not even notice it happening. Disabling Bluetooth and NFC when not in use can also help your device security. This usually pertains more for Android users than iPhone users though.

    Second we have passwords in general. Password best practices have usually included using long and complex passwords consisting of many numbers, letters, and characters but they are usually hard to remember so people tend to write them down. To avoid this and the security nightmare of people putting sticky notes with passwords on them throughout their office, use long but simple and memorable complex passwords. They usually consist of a memorable sentence or phrase with some numbers and special characters rather than a mix of mealiness garble. If you still can’t remember and just want an even easier way to save your passwords, use password management apps to remember your passwords for you. Just make sure they and encrypted and secure with a master password like Apple’s Keychain, 1Password, and others like Dashlane. Most of them now, even third party password management apps, unlock and auto fill passwords for accounts by using biometrics such as FaceID and TouchID. An easy, convenient, and secure way to keep passwords safe. Thirdly, speaking of encryption, make sure you enable it on your device and use encryption whenever possible. Many modern devices have the option to enable encryption and secure your device if it were ever taken. In fact all iOS devices come standard with encryption and on Android you can enable it in settings. (Just make sure your Android device is not rooted and up to date.) Using encrypted services like messaging apps for example keep your messages hidden and unreadable by anyone else but the receiver. This is why iMessage and WhatsApp are preferable over traditional SMS or other direct messaging services and apps.

    Fourthly and in my opinion the most important on an entirety level is keeping your devices up to date. If you are running the most recent and up to date software then good on you! That means you are less vulnerable to attacks and less of a security risk for you and even your business. Software updates don’t always introduce new features and visual improvements, they are extremely vital to keeping hackers and viruses at bay. They often and always include security patches and bug fixes to shore up vulnerabilities in the operating system. So turn on automatic updates for both apps from the app store and your operating system to remain on the leading edge of security. Plus you get to enjoy those new features on the side. Fifth and last we must understand the difference between trusted and untrusted sources. This pertains to downloading and installing apps from sources from many different places and whether those said places are to be actually trusted and clean. A trusted source is your perspective app store for your operating system. On iOS it is the App Store with its blue app A icon and on Android it is the Google Play Store with its colorful play button icon. Downloading apps from these places are very safe and don’t include any harm to your phone such as viruses and worms. Untrusted sources on the other hand are places like random download sites and file sharing services that let you install unknown apps. This is mostly an Android and Windows problem due to the open nature and non walled garden structure of their operating systems. So install antivirus software to check for any strange attachments that may have come with a download and make sure unknown sources is disabled in settings.

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    So if one were to follow these five simple precautions with their mobile devices then they should have nothing to worry about when protecting their personal data. Our phones and devices know practically everything about us. So any rational and ethical human would want to protect that data from falling into the wrong hands. Keeping your devices on you, protected and secured, and up to date while using trusted sources can ensure that normalcy of privacy continues. Aside from the regular data mining from big brother Google that is.

Follow Daniel Burns on Twitter, @DBurnsOfficial

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