How Can Businesses Protect Mobile Devices From Cyber Threats?

*Updated 14 September 2026*

Mobile devices have become access points to some of the most valuable parts of an organisation, including email, cloud applications, customer information, collaboration platforms and corporate networks.

That changes the mobile security challenge.

Protecting a smartphone or tablet is no longer enough. Businesses need to protect the identity using the device, decide what that device can access, control the applications handling company data and detect suspicious activity before one compromised mobile account becomes a wider security incident.

This matters because attackers increasingly target people and access rather than attempting to break through the traditional network perimeter.

The UK Government's Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025 to 2026 found that 43% of UK businesses experienced a cyber security breach or attack during the previous 12 months. This rose to 65% of medium-sized businesses and 69% of large businesses.

Phishing remained the most common form of attack, affecting 38% of businesses.

For organisations supporting mobile, hybrid and remote employees, securing access wherever users work should therefore form part of the wider cyber security strategy.

What Is Mobile Cyber Security?

The short answer

Mobile cyber security is the combination of technology, policies and processes used to protect smartphones, tablets and other portable devices accessing business systems and data.

Effective mobile security should protect five areas.

1. The device
2. The user's identity
3. Access to applications and networks
4. Business data
5. Detection and recovery

The distinction matters because securing only the physical device leaves other routes open.

A properly configured smartphone could still expose an organisation if an employee enters their credentials into a convincing phishing page or approves a fraudulent authentication request.

Britannic recommends treating every mobile device as an access point to business identity and data, rather than simply another endpoint requiring antivirus software.

Why Are Mobile Devices Becoming A Bigger Cyber Security Risk?

Mobile working has blurred the traditional boundaries between trusted corporate networks and external environments.

Employees may now access business applications from offices, homes, customer locations, public networks and personal devices.

Attackers can exploit that flexibility.

ENISA's Threat Landscape 2025 analysed 4,875 incidents between July 2024 and June 2025 and found that phishing, including techniques such as vishing, accounted for around 60% of identified initial intrusion vectors.

ENISA also specifically identified a higher volume of attacks targeting mobile devices, with outdated devices highlighted as an area of concern.

The Verizon 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report identified another significant trend, reporting a 40% increase in mobile social engineering success.

The mobile security challenge therefore extends well beyond malicious applications.

Attackers can target

• User credentials
• Authentication prompts
• Messaging applications
• SMS messages
• QR codes
• Email
• Cloud applications
• Unpatched software
• Personal devices
• Public or untrusted networks
• Lost or stolen devices

Businesses need controls that work across all of these areas rather than relying on a single mobile security product.

What Are The Main Mobile Cyber Security Threats?

Threat	How It Happens	Potential Business Impact
Mobile phishing	Users follow fraudulent links through email, SMS, messaging apps or QR codes	Credential theft and account takeover
Stolen credentials	Passwords are captured, reused or purchased by attackers	Unauthorised access to cloud applications and data
Malicious applications	Unsafe or compromised apps gain access to device information	Data theft, monitoring or malware infection
Unpatched devices	Known vulnerabilities remain available to attackers	Device compromise and unauthorised access
Lost or stolen devices	A physical device containing or accessing company data is lost	Data exposure and account compromise
Unsafe networks	Employees connect through poorly secured external networks	Increased exposure to interception or manipulation
Shadow IT	Employees use unapproved applications to store or share business information	Reduced visibility and uncontrolled data movement
MFA manipulation	Attackers trick users into approving fraudulent authentication requests	Account takeover despite MFA being enabled

The risks overlap.

A phishing message may steal a password, an attacker may then trigger an authentication request and a compromised identity may ultimately provide access to corporate applications.

This is why mobile security needs to be designed as a layered system.

What Is Britannic's Five-Layer Mobile Security Framework?

Britannic recommends assessing mobile security through five connected layers.

Layer	Security Question	Typical Controls
1. Control the device	Is the device known, configured correctly and supported?	Device management, patching, encryption, screen locks and remote wipe
2. Verify the identity	Is the person accessing the system really the authorised user?	MFA, identity management, conditional access and stronger authentication
3. Limit the access	Should this user and device have access to this resource?	Zero Trust, least privilege, ZTNA and network segmentation
4. Protect the data	What information can the device access, store or share?	Data protection, application controls, backup and secure configuration
5. Detect and recover	Can suspicious activity be identified and contained quickly?	EDR/XDR, monitoring, incident response, backup and recovery

Businesses should review all five layers together.

A weakness in any one can undermine the others.

For example, deploying MFA will strengthen identity security, but its value is reduced if attackers can repeatedly send authentication prompts until a user approves one.

Likewise, mobile device management can enforce device policies, but it cannot determine whether every request for access is appropriate.

How Can Businesses Secure Mobile Devices?

The first layer is establishing control over the devices accessing company information.

The National Cyber Security Centre recommends actively managing devices throughout their lifecycle, including secure configuration, monitoring, software updates and removing obsolete technology.

Mobile Device Management or Unified Endpoint Management can help organisations apply policies consistently across managed devices.

Typical controls include

• Requiring device encryption
• Enforcing secure screen locks
• Controlling operating system versions
• Applying application policies
• Preventing unsupported devices from accessing sensitive systems
• Remotely locking or wiping lost devices
• Monitoring device compliance
• Separating corporate and personal information where appropriate

Organisations also need to decide whether personal devices should be permitted.

BYOD is not automatically insecure, but allowing unmanaged personal devices access to corporate systems without clearly defined controls increases risk.

How Can MFA Protect Mobile Workers?

Multi-Factor Authentication adds another verification step beyond a username and password.

This makes stolen credentials harder to use successfully.

However, businesses should avoid treating MFA as a complete solution.

Attackers increasingly use social engineering techniques designed specifically to bypass authentication controls, including fraudulent push notifications and convincing users to approve access.

Where risk justifies it, organisations should consider stronger or phishing-resistant authentication methods alongside conditional access policies.

Britannic works with technologies including Fortinet FortiAuthenticator and FortiToken as part of wider identity and access strategies.

The objective is to ensure access decisions consider more than whether someone knows the correct password.

What Is Zero Trust And Why Does It Matter For Mobile Security?

Traditional security models often assumed that users connecting through the corporate network could be trusted.

That assumption becomes difficult to maintain when employees work across multiple locations, devices and cloud applications.

Zero Trust works from the opposite principle.

Access is verified based on factors such as identity, device health, permissions and context rather than automatically trusting a connection because of its location.

For mobile workers, this means an organisation can ask:

• Who is requesting access?
• Is the device approved?
• Is it up to date?
• Where is the request coming from?
• Does the user need access to this application?
• Is the behaviour unusual?
• Should additional authentication be required?

Britannic's Fortinet solutions can combine technologies including next-generation firewalls, FortiClient, identity controls, Zero Trust Network Access and segmentation to help organisations apply consistent security across offices and remote locations.

How Does Secure Remote Access Reduce Mobile Security Risk?

Mobile security and remote access are increasingly part of the same problem.

Employees need secure access to cloud applications and business systems regardless of whether they are working from an office, home, customer location or mobile connection.

Providing broad network access through traditional methods can expose more systems than an individual employee actually needs.

A more controlled approach can combine technologies including

• Zero Trust Network Access
• Identity and Access Management
• Secure Access Service Edge
• Endpoint Detection and Response
• Network segmentation
• Conditional access
• Central monitoring

Britannic's Managed Secure SD-WAN proposition, built on Fortinet technology, combines networking and security capabilities including next-generation firewalling and Zero Trust Network Access.

This enables security policies to follow users and applications across distributed environments rather than stopping at the office boundary.

How Can Endpoint Protection Strengthen Mobile And Remote Security?

Preventing attacks is only part of the challenge.

Organisations also need visibility when suspicious activity reaches a device or account.

Endpoint Detection and Response and Extended Detection and Response technologies can monitor endpoints for unusual activity, identify threats and help isolate compromised systems.

Britannic's partnership with Acronis brings together endpoint security, backup, disaster recovery and cyber protection.

Acronis MDR/XDR adds continuous threat monitoring and expert-led incident response, helping organisations identify and contain threats without necessarily having to build a large internal security operations capability.

This is particularly valuable across distributed environments where businesses need visibility across endpoints, workloads and cloud services.

How Important Is Employee Security Training?

Technical controls cannot prevent every attack.

Mobile interfaces can make social engineering particularly difficult to identify because smaller screens may hide complete URLs, sender details or other warning signs.

Employees should understand how to identify

• Suspicious SMS messages
• Unexpected authentication prompts
• Fraudulent QR codes
• Unusual login requests
• Fake password reset pages
• Malicious links
• Requests to install unknown applications
• Attempts to move conversations onto unapproved platforms

Training should also explain what employees should do when they think something has gone wrong.

Fast reporting gives security teams an opportunity to disable accounts, revoke sessions or isolate devices before an incident spreads.

Security awareness should therefore be continuous and supported by technical controls, rather than limited to an annual training module.

How Is AI Changing Mobile Cyber Threats?

AI is making social engineering faster and easier to scale.

IBM's 2026 Cost of a Data Breach research found that 22% of UK organisations surveyed reported experiencing AI-generated attacks.

Among the AI-enabled attack types reported in the research, deepfake impersonation was the most common, followed by AI-enabled malware and phishing.

This creates a particular challenge for mobile users because attackers can combine different communications channels.

An employee might receive a convincing email, followed by a text message, voice call or authentication request designed to make the interaction appear legitimate.

Security controls therefore need to consider communications and behaviour across multiple channels rather than assessing each interaction in isolation.

What Should Businesses Do If A Mobile Device Is Lost Or Compromised?

Organisations should have a documented response process before an incident occurs.

If a business mobile device is lost, stolen or suspected of compromise, teams should be able to:

1. Report the incident immediately
2. Lock or remotely wipe the device where appropriate
3. Disable or review affected accounts
4. Revoke active sessions and authentication tokens
5. Reset compromised credentials
6. Review suspicious login activity
7. Determine what information could have been accessed
8. Isolate other affected devices or systems
9. Restore data from trusted backups where required
10. Record the incident and review why the controls failed

The speed of this response matters.

A lost handset should not automatically become a lost corporate identity.

What Should Be Included In A Mobile Cyber Security Review?

A practical review should examine the complete route between the employee and corporate data.

Mobile Cyber Security Checklist

• Identify every device accessing business systems
• Separate corporate-owned and personal devices
• Remove unsupported or obsolete devices
• Keep operating systems and applications updated
• Enforce device encryption
• Require secure screen locking
• Introduce central device management where appropriate
• Enforce MFA for important business applications
• Review privileged and administrator accounts
• Consider phishing-resistant authentication for higher-risk access
• Apply least privilege principles
• Review remote access permissions
• Introduce Zero Trust controls where appropriate
• Restrict access from non-compliant devices
• Review applications handling sensitive data
• Control unapproved applications and Shadow IT
• Deploy endpoint detection where appropriate
• Monitor unusual login and device behaviour
• Maintain secure backups
• Test remote lock and wipe procedures
• Provide regular security awareness training
• Run phishing and social engineering simulations
• Create a clear lost or compromised device process
• Review third-party access
• Test incident response procedures regularly

The objective is not to deploy every possible security technology.

Controls should reflect the organisation's risk profile, regulatory obligations, workforce and the sensitivity of the systems being accessed.

How Can Businesses Build A More Resilient Mobile Security Strategy?

Mobile security should not operate as a separate IT project.

Devices now sit within a larger environment containing identity, networks, cloud applications, communications platforms, endpoints and business data.

Protecting that environment requires a layered strategy.

The device needs to be managed.

The user's identity needs to be verified.

Access needs to be limited.

Business data needs to be protected.

Suspicious behaviour needs to be detected.

Recovery needs to be planned before an attack occurs.

Britannic integrates technologies from partners including Fortinet and Acronis with networking, managed services and existing IT environments to help organisations strengthen security without creating unnecessary operational complexity.

Organisations reviewing mobile, remote or hybrid working security can book a complimentary meeting with Britannic to assess current risks, identify security gaps and prioritise the controls that will have the greatest impact.