Tag: mobile security risks

Fraud is already rapidly on the rise in this sector which remains relatively limited, and it is only expected to grow.

When it comes to the adoption of smartphone based payments, one of the biggest concerns of consumers is mobile security, and for good reason, according to the latest data that has revealed that fraud in this area is a growing trend and it is coming at a considerable price.

The m-payments market was slow to get started, but it is experiencing some growth.

However, at the same time that m-payments are slowly growing, mobile security risks are increasing rapidly and are expected by experts to increase at a more rapid pace in coming years. This problem is expanded when m-commerce is taken into account, as shopping over smartphones has been taking off at a very rapid rate and is expected to become quite explosive over the upcoming holiday buying season.

A recent report has shown that the cost that mobile security issues is going to be a pricy one.

According to the Gartner technology research group’s projections, over the next four years, m-payments will experience a 35 percent average annual growth rate, which will send the number of users to around 450 million, and the amount of spending over this method up to $721 billion by 2017. In North America, alone, there is expected to be a growth rate of 53 percent, this year, so that by the end of 2013, it will have reached $37 billion, when compared to last year’s $24 billion. This is positive news for that industry, but also represents a growing mobile security risk as it becomes a more lucrative target to potential scammers and thieves.

All of the major players in smartphones and technology seem to have made their way into m-payments in one way or another, each with their own efforts to enhance mobile security to the point that they can make consumers comfortable with the tech and keep out fraud at the same time. This includes the acquisition of Braintree by PayPal, the new and improved mobile wallet launch by Google, and the addition of fingerprint scanning and biometrics by Apple.

Still, the primary barrier that all of those companies face is in mobile security, as consumers are still not convinced of the safety of their sensitive data. As many consumers are already quite comfortable with the payments methods that they already use, they are not ready to take a risk on a new and little known technology, when they don’t feel that their credit and debit cards are causing them an inconvenience.

This is exacerbated by the number of devices that remain unprotected.

Mobile security solutions providers are already struggling with the practices of many clients through their BYOD initiatives – which are becoming increasingly common – but a new report has indicated that the problem is growing on a large number of levels.

The report indicates that cybersecurity threats have taken off over the last two years, particularly in smartphones.

The study was conducted by Juniper Research Ltd., a firm based in the United Kingdom, and indicated that mobile security threats have taken off over the last couple of years and despite that fact, the majority of smartphones still remain nearly entirely unprotected.

This is because mobile security threats are starting to change in their primary focus.

Although cyber criminals had initially transferred their focus from PCs to mobile devices for consumers, they are starting to concentrate on the enterprise space to a growing degree. By the end of this year, it is expected that there will be one million types of mobile malware that will be thriving by the end of 2013.

In fact, the analysts at Juniper determined that over 80 percent of all consumer and enterprise owned smartphones will continue to be unprotected throughout the remainder of the year, despite the large exposure and considerable threat of malware. The slow mobile security protection is the result of low awareness among device users to the vulnerabilities, and the overall perception that these devices are too expensive to protect.

These findings were published in Juniper’s “Mobile Security: BYOD, mCommerce, Consumer &Enterprise 2013-2018” report. Within that report, Juniper divided the online landscape for mobile security threats down into various different segments. Approximately 70 percent of the threats were found to be able to steal a smartphone owner’s personal data that is stored on the device. An additional 20 percent of these types of malware are forms of adware and spyware that need the permission of the user for installation and that then proceed to collect device location, personal data, or usage behavior.

Though the mobile security situation may look bad, the report did indicate that there is a growth in awareness and that this is beginning to have an impact on the attitudes and behaviors of device users in securing their gadgets.