In July polling of 500 IT professionals, 96 percent said the government should allow wireless carriers to exchange information to help identify vulnerabilities and protect users from cyberfraud. Sixty-eight percent stated that wireless carriers and the public sector need to work collaboratively on cybersecurity issues.
The survey results were unveiled at MobileCon, CTIA’s mobile IT conference held in San Diego.
“The wireless industry recognizes the importance of keeping our customers and our communications networks safe and secure from cyberthreats,” said Steve Largent, president and CEO of CTIA, in a statement. “As the IT professionals have identified in this survey, in order to do this, public and private organizations must be able to share information so we can better secure our networks and protect our customers.”
Of the survey participants, 88 percent said they thought tablet devices were vulnerable to cyberattacks such as spam, malware, phishing and botnets. Eighty-six percent felt smartphones were also vulnerable to the attacks.
Using a 100-point system, IT professionals identified protection against hacking of government information/systems (15.6) as one of most important mobile cybersecurity challenges. Using the same scale, respondents said the lack of information sharing and cooperation between the wireless industry and government was the fourth most important cybersecurity issue (21.9).
A copy of the survey and charts of some of the statistics are available on the CITA website.
