Category: Mobile Security

Mobile payments to benefit from new security solutions

Security has become a top priority for the mobile payments space. Consumers have shown that they are willing to embrace mobile payments systems, but still retain a great deal of concern regarding the security of their financial information. The security of mobile payments has been attracting more attention as mobile commerce sees more adoption. Many consumers continue to express worry over the security of their financial information, suggesting that modern mobile payments systems have yet to reach a point where they can be considered safe to use.

Security begins receiving more serious attention

As consumers continue to show worry over their security, companies invested in mobile payments are beginning to take the issue more seriously. Such is the cash with Swish, which has been involved in the mobile commerce space for some time. Like other companies in this sector, Swish considers security to be a major roadblock for mobile payments. As such, the company has been working to develop more comprehensive security solutions to provide consumers with some peace of mind. Swish plans to begin showcasing its security solutions at the end of this month.

Swish intends to showcase security solutions at the end of the month

Swish is one of the first companies to introduce mobile point-of-sale systems to the Asian market. Mobile payments have found a great deal of success in this market due to the high penetration of mobile technology. While consumers have been showing that they are ready to embrace mobile commerce, many still consider the field to be insecure, which has slowed the progress that mobile payments could potentially see. Swish intends for its security solutions to boost the confidence consumers have in the sector.

Mobile payments becoming a popular target for hackers

The security of mobile payments is not only important to Asian consumers, of course, and those in other parts of the world share the same concerns regarding the security of mobile commerce. Because mobile commerce involves the trafficking of financial information through mobile devices, the mobile commerce field has become a very attractive target for hackers and malicious groups that may look to exploit this information.

This announcement was made in line with the one year anniversary of the Digital Government Strategy.

Officials from the White House have just announced a number of new initiatives and resources that it is making available, including guidelines for mobile security, which are meant to help to boost the vision of the administration to allow access to government information, in a secure manner, on any device and at any time.

Digital Government Strategy U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel made the announcement regarding these brand new initiatives.

He said that they are meant to help to maintain the building that is occurring on the foundation of accomplishments that have already been achieved over the last year by the Digital Government Strategy. Within a joint statement, federal CTO Todd Park, and VanRoekel announced that a government wide set of mobile security guidelines have been published by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

The guidelines also offer a baseline of standard mobile security requirements for federal agencies.

Furthermore, beyond those requirements for computing, it also includes a federal agency mobile computing decision framework, and a reference architecture for mobile security. These new documents are meaningful not only because they provide a standard for government agencies and industry for the development of products that can be used more safely on government networks, but also because of the active roles in development that were played by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security.

VanRoekel explained that “This work … really sets the foundation in place for the next phase of federal computing.” He also went on to add that “The future for us is one where mobile is the default computing platform.”

This announcement was made closely on the heels of an approval that the government gave to iPhones and other iOS based devices based on their ability to pass the mobile security requirements throughout a lengthy and exhaustive testing process. The federal government has also released a new catalog for developers that is made up of more than four hundred machine readable government data sets.