Today is Halloween and trick or treating should occur when ghosts and goblins knock at your door looking for candy. Now just imagine when scary monsters come knocking on your business-critical mobile devices looking for sensitive data, or wanting to suck the life out of your batteries, or are looking to find ways to crash your apps.

These bone-chilling threats can send shivers down the spines of the most seasoned IT administrators. Brace yourself; here are five of the scariest things that can happen to enterprise mobile devices.

1. Data Breach Hauntings

It’s a top nightmare that haunts IT administrators across every business in every industry: having data exposed and stolen by hackers. And with good reason, too. Check out these numbers for 2023:

Data breaches come in all sorts of ways. It could be a malicious hacker, looking to steal personal information. Or it could be an innocent looking app laced with data-stealing malware. Maybe it’s a simple link in an email that leads to a suspicious website. Whatever the cause of the breach, the results are ghastly: stolen data, damaged reputations, lost revenue and eroded customer trust.

2. The Curse of Unsecured Wi-Fi

There’s a good chance Dracula’s castle or Dr. Frankenstein’s lab – or even your favorite coffee shop – is cursed with unsecured Wi-Fi. Connecting to an unsecured Wi-Fi network is bound to elicit a blood-curdling scream from any IT professional. Here’s why:

• Malware, Viruses and Worms: Hackers can infect an unsecured Wi-Fi network which, in turn, infects the devices that connect to it. Malware spies on the devices it infiltrates. Viruses spread as infected files are opened. And worms replicate themselves, making them extremely difficult to get rid of.
• Rogue Networks: A rogue network or rogue access point acts as a “back door” to access sensitive data. It appears to be a legitimate Wi-Fi connection and tricks users into connecting to it, thus sharing sensitive information with a hacker. This is sometimes known as a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack.
• Session Tracking: Hackers can monitor files and data sent between a device and server via an unsecured Wi-Fi network. They can see who is connected to the router of an unsecured network and inject some bad JavaScript directly onto a device.

3. The Phantom of the Lost or Stolen Device

Losing a mobile device is terrifying enough. But when that device is full of sensitive company or customer information, it’s enough to make your hair stand on end. Lost or stolen devices can become portals for unauthorized access to corporate networks which can result in data breaches. And it’s frightening to think just how many devices are lost or stolen each year:

 

It’s expected that 69% of organizations will manage 1,000+ devices by 2025. Using the numbers above, that means:

• 43 devices will be lost or stolen
• 40 will never be retrieved
• An organization can lose $2,000,000 (USD) – or more – when devices are lost or stolen

4. Batteries of Doom

Imagine walking down the street with a bag full of Halloween candy when suddenly, the bag rips and the candy spills all over the sidewalk. Before continuing, you must wait for a replacement bag to arrive so you can put the candy back inside and collect more. You are missing out on valuable trick-or-treating time and by the time the bag finally arrives, Halloween is just about over.

Now picture a battery that’s powering a business-critical mobile device that suddenly dies in the middle of a shift; something that impacts nearly 80% of enterprises. While it’s RIP for that battery, the device – and the worker using it – aren’t doing anything as they wait for a replacement battery to become available or as they wait for the dead battery to recharge.

When batteries fail, here’s how it impacts productivity and profitability:

50 minutes Of productivity lost with every mid-shift battery failure

$1 million (USD) Lost profit for businesses with 500 mobile workers

30% Mid-shift battery failure rate per 10 shifts

Problematic batteries can be everywhere: They may be inside the smartphones, tablets or rugged devices powering your mobile operations. They may be mixed with a stockpile of perfectly healthy batteries. And when batteries fail, it’s already too late to protect against unexpected downtime.

5. Printer Poltergeists

A mobile or industrial printer may look harmless enough, but there may be dangerous demons lurking inside, waiting to emerge and bring you nothing but bad luck:

• Outdated Firmware: Old firmware is an open invitation for security threats such as viruses and malware to infect and spread through your network.
• Incorrect Print Speed: Is your printer printing too slow? Too fast? Whatever the case, if your printers aren’t printing at the right speed, the output will be less than satisfactory for your business needs.
• Incorrect Print Head Temperature: If your print head overheats, production and productivity can grind to a halt for up to 15 minutes (or longer) as it cools down.
• Compliance Risks: Are your mobile and industrial printers compliant with security regulations such as HIPAA or GDPR?
• Different Printer Combinations: Organizations may have a mix of old and new printers from different original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). It can be a challenge to maintain and manage multiple printers using multiple OEM software solutions.

It can cost up to $25,000 (USD) of lost productivity when printers are offline for two-hours. And when printers go down, they often must travel back to IT to be diagnosed and repaired. It’s enough to turn any IT administrator into a howling werewolf… even if there isn’t a full moon out.

Protect Against Technology Tricks and Treats with SOTI

Incantations may ward off evil spirits knocking at your door, but to exorcise potential threats to your business-critical mobile devices, you need the SOTI ONE Platform:

• SOTI MobiControl can scare away threats looking to steal sensitive data
• SOTI XSight lets you see what’s happening with your devices in the field… no cauldron require
• SOTI Connect can cast spells to maximize printer performance

Halloween may be the scariest day of the year, but every day there are monsters and mishaps just waiting to deliver a treat nobody wants: costly and lengthy downtime. But you’ll fear not when you have SOTI on your side.

Here are three ways you can learn more about the SOTI ONE Platform.