Keeping abreast of connectivity and mobility trends for 2024

Next year will be a busy one for business leaders and IT managers, and right now they are spending much of their time figuring out what areas they need to focus on for the months ahead.

Karl Duffy, head of enterprise and public sector at Three Ireland, recommends concentrating on two key areas: mobile security and Device-as-a-Service (DaaS).

Mobile security is a significant area that has received much attention thanks to numerous global attacks. Given the large number of ransomware, malware and phishing attacks, protecting all devices is crucial.

According to a ComReg report, phone scams cost Irish people and businesses €300 million annually.*

While laptops and other devices may have multiple layers of security, mobile devices can be overlooked, with many businesses failing to include mobile devices as part of their overall cyber security strategy.

Digital transformation, cloud adoption and the rise of hybrid working means that sensitive company data is increasingly accessed and stored on mobile devices. “They’re on equal footing with laptops regarding access to information,” Duffy commented.

If you’re the IT director or CIO of an organisation, it’s fairly damning if there’s a cyber attack, and it was the result of not having the right protections in place

A worrying statistic from Verizon Mobile Security Index 2023** is that mobile app threats increased by over 30 per cent between the first half of 2022 and the first half of 2023. Duffy mentioned that “one in three cyber attacks will cause downtime for an enterprise, which can easily mean mobile devices are at the centre of the attack”.

“Some of the consequences depend on the severity of the impact and the publicity of the attack,” he said. “You could have financial damages, stolen or lost IP, regulatory fines if you’re operating in a regulatory environment, GDPR breaches and the one that hits most people is the possible long-term reputational damage for the organisation.

“If you’re the IT director or CIO of an organisation, it’s fairly damning if there’s a cyber attack, and it was the result of not having the right protections in place and a mobile device is found as the cause of the access point into your network.”

Some confusion can occur by mixing up mobile security with Mobile Device Management (MDM). While MDM allows you to keep your work and personal set-ups separate, it doesn’t stop malicious actors from accessing your phone.

Three Ireland helps protect customers by working closely with them and securing their mobile devices through its 3Mobile Protect solution, powered by Corrata.

According to Duffy, MDM is not a security fence but instead contains your work apps and information elsewhere, and once 3Mobile Protect is on your device, you don’t have to check on it as it works in the background. It helps protect employee user credentials by stopping the latest SMS, social media and WhatsApp scams in their tracks.

It also ensures that IT leaders can keep tabs on security settings for workers, blocking inappropriate content, helping employees stay productive with site and app restrictions and ensuring that everyone has updated software and follows best practices.

Likewise, it allows an organisation’s IT team to keep up with updates and monitoring to ensure proper upkeep or put limits to areas like roaming if certain employees are travelling a lot, something that can quickly add to business costs if you’re not careful.

“They may not be massive numbers on their own, but consistent small costs in this world can add up and be quite expensive,” he said. “So roaming controls are quite valuable because you avoid building up those bills.”

The second trend Duffy mentioned is Device as a Service (DaaS), which brings mobility into the ‘As A Service’ slipstream by creating a proposition that manages the end-to-end lifecycle of mobile devices.

With the global market expected to reach $455 billion by 2030***, more businesses are moving to the more economical approach.

Device as a Service (DaaS) is expected to grow fast in the European market in the coming years as businesses request increased levels of financial control, flexibility and data on the environmental impact of their devices.

As part of DaaS, organisations have access to a fast repair-and-replace service, ensuring their device configuration and setup is standardised and managed through a specialised DaaS platform, which means updates can be pushed to hundreds or thousands of devices at once from a centralised console, and those assets can be tracked and monitored centrally for performance and replacement.

“When it comes to replacement, at Three, we don’t waste the device; DaaS is a key part of a wider enterprise’s sustainability strategy because we have a recycling function. We take the device back and provide you with a new one. We either reissue the old device or responsibly recycle for parts and manage the e-waste in ISO-compliant terms,” said Duffy.

“We’re seeing this as particularly important because sustainability is a huge topic. We in Three are very sustainability-focused, so we have to find ways and solutions not just to help ourselves be more sustainable but also help our customers,” he added.

Tying all this together is the growth in Three’s network and continuous innovation. Three Ireland now has more than 90 per cent 5G and over 99 per cent 4G population coverage. It has invested more than €2 billion in Ireland and is independently verified by Ookla as the fastest and most consistent 5G network.****

*https://www.comreg.ie/comreg-is-consulting-on-combatting-scam-calls-and-texts/

** https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/mobile-security-index/

*** Device as a Service (DaaS) Market Size, Share and Forecast to 2030 | Straits Research

**** Based on analysis by Ookla® of Speedtest Intelligence® data, Speed Score, Consistency Score, Ireland, Q1-Q2 2023. Ookla trademarks used under license and reprinted with permission.