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August 13, 2010 By Hilton Collins
Smartphone use is on the rise, not just with consumers but with companies as well. They're becoming more and more like mini-computers. According to an August 2010 ABI Research report, more than 60 percent of handsets will have mobile browsers in them by 2015.
But that added functionality and ubiquity could make them prime targets for cyber-attackers in the future, if not today. Smartphones could become even more attractive to cyber-criminals because users might not focus on securing them as much as they do for traditional hardware.
Ron Meyran, director of security products at Radware, an application delivery and security company, believes there are three reasons why smartphone security often is neglected.
"I think today the threat is unawareness. The second thing is the fact that nobody treats the smartphone as a real computing platform but more as a gadget," he said. "The third is the fact that today, IT security managers are overwhelmed with the workload that they have, especially in the past two years. During the recession, they had been cutting budgets and the human factor -- they had to lay off people."
With less money and less manpower, IT security professionals in the private sector and government have to secure not only laptops and desktops, but also a slew of additional mobile devices. Meyran said not enough IT shops are doing both.
"The mobile device today has an operating system, communications stack, applications -- everything -- which makes it vulnerable just like any PC," he said. "Today we don't see many tools to protect smartphones."
Radware issued a statement in early August listing three threats to the unprepared:
Meyran said that Radware has been informed of these kinds of attacks from its customers -- server providers who manage the mobile networks -- who get complaints from their users experiencing problems with their phones. Many Radware customers are cellular providers or e-commerce business. Unhappy customers are bad for business.
"They simply want to maintain their service," Meyran said.
You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to
http://www.govtech.com/security/3-Reasons-Why-Smartphone-Security-Is.html
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Is this article serious? I mean really serious? You quote from a company whose job is to SELL products to "protect" people from unseen attacks as your source. What's next, you going to do an article about how eating people is good and quote from a tribe of cannibals? This article is stupid.
Well, I am quite certain that a cannibal tribe's perspective would be that "eating people is nourishing" but I dare say that if you have cannibals living in your neck of the woods, then you ought to get all your best friends on your speed dial, and get some decent security going there. Ha ha ha