Tag: mobile security

Mobile security concerns continue to hold back mobile payments

| April 15, 2013

Mobile Security Smartphone and tablet banking has been suffering from the same worries from consumers.

Despite the fact that smartphone payments and banking services are being used by a growing number of people, mobile security concerns are keeping the rate of adoption at a notably lower level than its full potential.

This, according to the most recent report issued by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The report was issued by the bureau in its partnership with Viggle and with InMobi. They discovered that while smartphones and tablets are being used increasingly by consumers who are managing their money online, its adoption would be greater if certain barriers did not remain in the way. Among consumers, 58 percent regularly use the app from their bank, while 50 percent use the optimized website. That said, there remain a large number of individuals who hesitate to use these services due to mobile security concerns.

Mobile security has not yet proven itself to many of the potential users who have yet to be swayed.

According to the vice president and general manager for the Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Anna Bager, discussed the situation studied in the research when she said “Clearly, mobile users are leaning into their devices for personal finance assistance wherever and whenever they happen to have a need.”

However, Bager also pointed out that consumers are still worried over mobile security issues with this type of services, even though they are using them more than they have before. She explained that “Most financial apps already contain rock-solid security, but consumers seem not to be as plugged into that fact, and that knowledge gap can make all the difference in driving further usage and adoption.”

Bager said that mobile security is an area where financial services marketers should be placing a significant amount of their focus in the campaigns that they are planning. The supported this belief, as 52 percent of its participants said that they would require a concrete guarantee, even in the case that the device should be lost, before they would use a smartphone for payments and banking for the first time, or before they would increase their use for these activities.

Mobile commerce poses a challenge for IT professionals

| April 14, 2013

Mobile Commerce IT professionalsMany IT executives around the world are struggling to meet the demands of a growing mobile market.

Based on the findings of the 2013 IT Priorities Survey from Protiviti, many of today’s IT professionals will find it difficult to meet the challenges of mobile commerce, as they are expected to deal with and manage various aspects of mobile technology without having the necessary expertise required.

The survey reveals that IT professionals have only average mobile technical knowledge.

Protiviti’s research results show that almost 200 survey participants, which included IT vice presidents, IT directors, chief security officers, chief information officers, and chief technology officers, scored only an average competent rating for mobile commerce and social media technical knowledge. More specifically, the participants achieved an average 2.8 rank out of 5 in terms of their tech knowledge for the following: m-commerce security, social media security, m-commerce integration, social media integration, and m-commerce policy.

There is a strong demand for mobile commerce, which is rapidly expanding throughout the globe.

Gary Anderson, Protiviti’s managing director for their Asia Pacific region, said that the fast and continued worldwide growth of mobile commerce shows that there is a powerful demand from both consumers and businesses who want to be able to access the information they want wherever they are, whenever they want it. However, with this demand also comes the potential for bigger technology risks.

Anderson went on to say that the result of this puts substantial pressure on businesses and IT departments, “as they are asked to deliver more mobile technology-enabled services. This pressure forces them to take on considerably more risk than they’re prepared for – especially in terms of policy, integration, data management, security and data privacy related to mobile commerce and social media proliferation and innovation.”

According to the survey results, of the 21 technical knowledge areas that were analyzed, the two chief areas that require the biggest improvements are mobile commerce security and social media security. Due to the need for greater security on these fronts, chief information officers (CIOs) and their IT staff will need to work on bettering security to meet the growing number of state and federal information security requirements, and to deal with other technology threats that will only increase as mobile commerce expands around the world.