Predictions consistently forecast a massive increase in problems of this nature for smartphones and tablets.
The latest forecasts regarding mobile security threats in 2014 have indicated that clickjacking, watering hole attacks, and other threats over smartphones and tablets will continue to grow in the danger that they will present.
Cyber criminals are increasingly expanding the focus of their attacks to a broader range of technologies.
According to Trend Micro, these cyber criminals are tucking themselves away in the Deep Web and are using much more sophisticated and targeted attack campaigns. This firm, which is an expert in internet and mobile security threats, has made its predictions for this year and has released them in its web video project which was entitled “2020: the Series”. This looked not only at this year but at the problems that will be faced right through to the end of this decade.
According to the firm, this year will already be a considerable one for mobile security threats.
The CTO of Trend Micro, Raimund Genes, has explained that 2014 will be a “prolific year for cybercrime”. This will have an impact on individuals, businesses, and even governments. Among the most common techniques are likely to be spear phishing, open source research. These are forecasted to experience a large amount of growth this year, particularly as best practice knowledge is shared throughout the cyber criminal community.
Two of the most problematic areas in smartphone and tablet use will be in dangers in mobile banking and in targeted attacks. The report indicated that the traditional two-step verification will no longer be enough to ensure that the user remains protected.
Other forms of attack that are likely to continue to take off are malicious apps as well as man-in-the-middle attacks. These are likely to be problematic for both individual consumers and corporate users of smartphones.
The vice president of security research Trend Micro, Rik Ferguson, spoke of this trend in mobile security threats, saying that “Technology advances only more rapidly and attackers are consistently just behind the crest of that innovation, waiting for widespread consumer adoption of new gadgets, new platforms or new ways of doing things.”
A report from Check Point Software revealed that for nearly half of them, this led to over $100,00 in damages.
A recent report produced by Check Point Software, which was published under the title of “The Impact of Mobile Devices on Information Security” has indicated that over the 12 months preceding their survey 79 percent of businesses experienced an incident relating to mobile security.
The survey not only determined that these issues were quite common but they are also very costly.
The survey included the participation of 790 IT professionals. It was conducted by Dimensional Research, which discovered that for 42 percent of the businesses that experienced these mobile security incidences, 42 percent said that it cost over $100,000 to repair the damages. Moreover, for 16 percent of the participants, the cost of these incidents was greater than $500,000.
Among large businesses, 52 percent said that mobile security incidents cost them over a half million dollars.
Nearly all of the companies that permitted the use of personal smartphones said that there is a growth in the number of these devices connecting to their corporate networks. Moreover, 45 percent of them said that there are five times more personal smartphones connecting to those networks than there had been in 2011.
At the same time, the research suggested that 63 percent of the participating businesses do not manage the corporate information over personal smartphones. Furthermore, 93 percent have stated that they have struggled to implement policies surrounding their BYOD programs. In fact, 67 percent felt that mobile security regarding corporate information is their primary challenge with BYOD policies.
Check Point mobile security evangelist and researcher, Tomer Teller, explained in a statement that “Without question, the explosion of BYOD, mobile apps, and cloud services has created a herculean task to protect corporate information for businesses both large and small.” He added that “An effective mobile security strategy will focus on protecting corporate information on the multitude of devices and implementing proper secure access controls to information and applications on the go. Equally important is educating employees about best practices as majority of businesses are more concerned with careless employees than cybercriminals.”
