Security concerns with increased Mobile Technology Usage
The use of mobile technology has been increasing dramatically in the last few years. In 2015 the percentage of Canadians who owned a smartphone was 68%, a 24% growth from 2014 (external link, opens in new window) . The numbers are even more staggering when you look at the United States where in 2014 90% of American adults owned a cell phone and 64% owned a smartphone (external link, opens in new window) . Considering the significant amount of people using mobile technology, its safe to assume that there is a large amount of data contained within these devices. However, the current usage of mobile data is nothing compared to what is expected in the near future. Mobile data usage is expected to increase tenfold by 2021 (external link, opens in new window) . As more data is transferred through the use of mobile technology any existing security risks puts larger number of people at risk and therefore should be given serious attention.
One area of concern for mobile technologies is fraud. Mobile technology is having a profound effect through e-commerce; it is now quite common for people to do things such as pay bills, transfer money and buy products online using their smartphone. A Dallas based company NQ mobile, which is regarded as a leader in security software for smartphones estimates that only 8 percent of the mobile market uses security products on phones (external link, opens in new window) . Combine this with the fact that approximately 317 million new pieces of malware (external link, opens in new window) was introduced in 2014 this is a major cause of concern.
Another area for concern among mobile devices is weak authentication. Mobile devices often do not have passwords enable or they have very simple passwords such as 1234 or 0000 (external link, opens in new window) . As a result any lost or stolen phones can fairly easily be accessed and private information can be stolen. This problem may prove very tricky to solve because while it could simply be resolved by enabling the password settings on the phone or using a more complex passwords, people are often reluctant to forgo the convenience of not having a password or having a very simple password that is easy to remember.
An important security concern on mobile devices is the lack of encrypted transmissions. “Encryption is a way to enhance the security of a message or file by scrambling the contents so that it can be read only by someone who has the right encryption key to unscramble it (external link, opens in new window) .” Information sent through mobile devices such as e-mails are usually not encrypted while in transit and many mobile applications do not encrypt data they transmit or receive over the network making it easy to intercept and understand.
The last security issue I will discuss in this blog is unauthorized modifications. By unauthorized modifications, it refers to the process of modifying a mobile device to remove its limitations (external link, opens in new window) (#9) (known as jailbreaking or rooting). This changes how security for the device is managed and could increase security risks. Jailbreaking allows users to access the operating system of a device to permit the installation of unauthorized software functions and applications and allows them not to be tied to any particular wireless carrier. By bypassing the application vetting process created by the manufacture, devices that have been undergone jailbreaking are much more likely to inadvertently download malware.
Mobile devices provide people with great convenience by allowing Internet assess with great mobility and ease. However this increase in convenience appears to come with a tradeoff of a decrease in data security. I think it is important that mobile technology companies put more security measures in place to prevent mobile technology users from being exploited