2020 has been a challenging year. Organizations had to quickly figure out how to secure employees and mobile endpoints working outside their existing perimeter-based controls. To take a step back, 2020 isn’t an anomaly. This shift to mobile-first was happening well before the pandemic.

It goes without saying that mobility has become the key to productivity for any modern business. This is especially true for the highly competitive pharmaceutical industry. To be the first to bring a ground-breaking treatment or vaccine to market, pharmaceutical organizations need their employees to stay productive whether they’re working on your organization’s premises or not.

A Government Business Council report from September of this year found 63% of federal employees are fully remote, with many expecting to remain that way for at least the next six months. In this new reality, mobile devices have become a critical lifeline. But the mobile phones and tablets that keep us efficient and effective also open our organizations up to new risks against which existing security does not defend.

In August 2020, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released its strategy to ensure the security and resilience of 5G infrastructure in the United States. Roughly every 10 years, the next generation of mobile communication networks is released, bringing faster speeds and increased capabilities.

Our mission has always been to secure the mobile experience and for many in our current climate, that means protecting employees as they work from home. Verizon recently announced the launch of Business Mobile Secure, a full security solution designed specifically for small and medium business customers with Lookout mobile security at the helm of the bundle’s modern endpoint protection offerings.

We just recently unveiled the industry’s first mobile endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution. This is an industry game changer as we are providing the same tools the Lookout security researchers use to hunt for novel threats to our customers to investigate cyberattacks. If you want to learn more about how we did it, I strongly encourage you to read our Chief Strategy Officer Aaron Cockerill’s blog on the announcement.

With recent global health events resulting in a surprise shift to an either completely remote or hybrid remote workforce for many organizations, the need to leverage mobile devices as work endpoints has grown significantly. This has created challenges for IT in maintaining both the ability to manage a wide range of devices, as well as securing them in a way that achieves corporate security objectives and governance.