Tag: mobile security concerns

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.”

Trend Micro releases new mobile security report

Trend Micro, a leading Internet security firm, has released a new study concerning the state of mobile security. Security has become a very significant issue in the mobile space and continues to grow more serious as more consumers purchase smartphones and tablets. The advent of mobile technology has helped changed the Internet and how people connect through digital mediums. Mobile devices today store information that is considered valuable to hackers and other groups that would be interested in exploiting this information for some gain.

Report highlights security threats linked to world events

According to Trend Micro’s latest report, called “Trend Micro Q1 2013,” major events unfolding around the world have sparked an increase in the number of spammers that have been showing up online. Malicious groups are forming parties that are vaguely associated with these events in order to ensnare consumers that are interested in what is happening around the world. The report notes that the attention that Google Glass, Google’s augmented reality eyewear, has been receiving recently in one of the events that has spawned new scamming attempts, putting strain on mobile security around the world.

Fake mobile games and applications target consumers

The study also found that fake mobile games are becoming a major issue for consumers. Gaming applications are typically distributed through services such as Google Play and the Apple App Store. These platforms have their own ways to ensure the safety of the applications they distribute, but the developers associated with these platforms typically only have to receive their distribution license once and are able to upload to these platforms freely once they become “trusted.” Some hacking groups have begun to pay developers to upload their malicious application, essentially circumventing the security measures that distribution platforms have in place.

Mobile security continues to demand attention

Mobile security continues to be a serious issue that is not often taken very seriously. Trend Micro suggests a large portion of the Android mobile devices that are in service today have been affected by mobile security threats in some form. Understanding these mobile security threats could be the first step in adequately defending mobile devices from the risks they face in the digital world.