Mobile Threat Defense or Mobile Threat Defense (MTD) is a dynamic and sophisticated protection against cyber threats targeting mobile devices. With an MTD, protection is applied to devices, networks and applications.
Why consider a MTD?
Mobile infrastructures, based on phones, tablets or other mobile equipment, are not the number one priority in terms of cyber security, compared to all attacks against Microsoft Windows systems for example.
Nevertheless, it is regularly found that mobile phone and tablet ecosystems are often vulnerable with permanent new 0days for sale on the Internet. In addition, application stores contain malicious applications and users can sometimes follow links and make mistakes, inadvertently triggering the deployment of a tool that will give the hand to a remote hacker.
Once the equipment is hacked, the attacker will usually be able to perform multiple malicious actions, such as stealing data (emails, photos, documents) or tracking (tracking GPS data) or discreet espionage (activating the camera to take photos and videos, or activating the microphone to listen to conversations remotely). These operations can sometimes leave evidences at the network level (multiplied flows) and/or performance level (quickly drained batteries), but not always, depending on the attacker’s discretion.
This is where Mobile Threat Defense (MTD) solutions are useful, like XDR/ MTD. This is therefore emerging as a tactical tool to combat threats to this environment.