Security company Zimperium has a noble goal – to finally offer enterprise customers complete protection on their mobile devices from cybercriminals. This, however, is more challenging than it sounds, explained Zimperium CEO Zuk Avraham. He elaborated that the variety of devices, fragmentation of operating system versions, and the fact that there are numerous manufactures all add to the complexity of securing smartphones.

On target

Exacerbating matters, Avraham stressed that a device’s security can be compromised not just via malicious apps or viruses, but through multiple vectors, including network attacks, which users are particularly vulnerable to when using public Wi-Fi; host attacks and by the more insidious base station attacks.

Avraham though believes he has found an innovative solution, which, rather than just detecting viruses, instead measures the impact of an attack from any threat vector. More specifically, he explained that the company’s mobile intrusion prevention system, called Zips, uses machine learning algorithms and behaviour-based monitoring to collect thousands of different parameters from the operating system, and then is able to measure the impact of an attack. In essence, this effectively turns mobiles devices into ‘sensors’ which can detect attacks inside and outside of the organisation, information which can then guard against hackers’ multi-vector attempts to compromise security.

The impossible made real

He explains that the approach differs from other convention- al mobile security solutions in that it doesn’t consume large amounts of battery life and system resources, nor does it need to be connected to the internet to offer protection. “People called us crazy, and told us it could not be done,” he relates. That, of course, didn’t stop the company from achieving its goal anyway. Interested companies can visit www.zimperium.com.