Global mobile penetration in Q4 2013 stood at 92% of the total global population. Smart phone use has been a growing segment as the current use of smart phones today comprises of 1.1 billion individuals. The use of smart phones is a rapid growing segment and by 2018, it is estimated the total number of smart phone users will triple to 3.3 billion. Smart phones unlike normal phones offer more in terms of connectivity to the internet and phone capabilities.
The growth of the use of smart phones particularly poses a challenge especially when it is taken into consideration the low concern of cyber security among mobile device users. Over 70% of smart phone users consider their phones safe from cyber crime. The lack of security is alarming considering the data access that smart phones provide. This includes the use by employees of both private and public employers to use their phones to access secure data from their places of work. Furthermore, mobile phones today have become hubs to negotiate private and social life. Low security at this end results in the access of this private information.
Yet less than 26% of smart phone users are likely to read developer policy before downloading software. Most downloads to smart phones were games and social networking apps at 46% and 37% respectively. Further, concerns by smart phone users in their rejection or deletion of apps was mainly due to the collection of personal data (Oltsik, 2014).
Mobile platform concerns
There has been an increase in newly reported vulnerabilities of mobile platforms. There has been a decrease of vulnerabilities of high severity, between 2011 and 2012. However, there has been an increase in the low and medium severity vulnerabilities of mobile platforms. during this period, there has been an increase in the number of web attacks blocked across these mobile platforms. The majority of the vulnerabilities has been as occurring in the android mobile platform. Particularly, there has been an exponential increase in reported malware attacks on the android platform. However, the iOS mobile platform has been facing increased vulnerabilities.
Enterprises cyber security
Employees today use their mobile phones to carry out workplace communication through their phone. This includes making calls as well as sending emails. Also, staff can have access to the organizational enterprise system through their phones. This creates a weakness to the enterprise solution as the infiltration of data at the user end is easy yet the organization may have well developed cyber security systems.
65% of corporate networks within the united states allow personal devices to connect to their networks. Further, among users of personal devices over 78% access corporate networks using more than one personal device. Yet with this use it is critical to note the security risk posed by mobile devices with over 71% of security risk to corporate networks being as a result of mobile devices. The android platform has been considered to have higher security risk. Additionally, it is important to note that 47% of computer networks allow data storage of customer data on mobile devices. Further, over 72% of computer networks operators report that careless employees pose a greater challenge to hackers (Check Point, 2012).
It has therefore been the imperative of computer security professionals to develop a mobile computing strategy to guide the coordination of device and security controls. One of the key areas addressed is the improvement of data access policies and controls. Additionally, the linking of security policies and application development has been an area of focus. Cyber security professionals have also to address the security policies for business processes.
Private and social information security
Private and social information cyber security is a particularly vulnerable area. This is mainly due to the low penetration of mobile online security software use. Yet, mobile phones large portions of social information such as pictures and videos. Further, with the recent innovations in the mobile phone industry, it has increased the challenges facing individuals in terms of cyber security. One of the developments is near field technology, near field technology allows the sue of mobile phones to make payments. The payments are undertaken through tapping phones on a NFC payment platform. The hacking of such information provides access to private information of bank accounts with disastrous impact on individuals. This has led to the development of protection to secure technology against hacking.
Conclusion
Mobile phones presents a facet of cyber security that has been over the years been gradually growing as an area of concern. Today, changes within the mobile phone industry are driving more concern among stakeholders. The changes include the increasing adoption of near field communication for mobile payments; the increased use of mobile phone devices; increasing growth of social media use and integration with daily lives. Therefore, one cannot develop an understanding of cyber security without analyzing the effect of mobile devices.
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