Gartner's Insights on Mobile Threat Defense

Written by Roxane Suau | December 08, 2017

As organizations turn to a mobile-first environment and malware attacks are constantly making the news, this year, the Mobile Threat Defense market has attracted more attention than ever.

Here are some interesting forecasts from Gartner’s Market Guide for Mobile Threat Defense solutions:

By 2019, mobile malware will amount to one-third of total malware reported in standard tests, up sharply from 7.5% of malware today.
By 2020, 30% of organizations will have MTD in place, up from the less than 10% who have it in place this year.

In a recent ComputerWorld article, Dionisio Zumerle, research director for mobile security at Gartner explained the importance of Mobile Threat Defense and why machine learning plays a crucial role in threat detection. The article stated: « It’s time to add MTD to your Enterprise Mobile Management toolkit. Because it’s better to get ahead of mobile threats than it is to try and clean them up after you’ve been attacked. »

So, how does MTD work?

Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates said: "Before, you could do a scan of the binary and find patterns that didn't match what they were supposed to do and detect it. Now, malware is often much more subtle and harder to find with a scan," Gold added. "You need to find the behavior of the app."

"By observing how devices behave, you can determine what is normal and what is abnormal behavior, and what might lead to a malicious action," Zumerle added. "Machine learning is one of the ways to speed this process up. Crowdsourcing is another component."

The Mobile Threat Defense technology relies on a behavioral engine to identify actions performed on mobile devices and uses machine learning to stay ahead of sophisticated threats and to cover 0-day attacks. It offers a protection from threats coming from apps, network and OS levels. Once detected, malicious activities are blocked before they do any harm.

Gartner recommends:

To introduce MTD solutions gradually, depending on industry, applicable regulations, the sensitivity of data on mobile devices, specific use cases and organizational risk appetite.
To adopt MTD sooner in high-security verticals, with large Android device fleets, or in regulated verticals, such as finance and healthcare.
To integrate MTD with enterprise mobility management (EMM) tools.

In the same article, Pradeo is mentioned among the industry's leading providers of MTD.

Pradeo Security for Mobile Threat Defense has been recognized by Gartner’s Market Guide for 4 years in a row. The precision of its detection technology makes it the most accurate solution on the market.