According to a report by McAfee, there has been a steady growth in the number of security threats to mobile platforms. Cisco has warned one and all to be cautious about malware as miscreants have become more and more creative by exploiting networks, systems and human vulnerabilities to steal information or do damage. Although phishing attacks decreased in 2010, spam reduced drastically, virus attacks majorly under control, malware still remains a scary aspect with technology development exploding beyond the realms of management.
With the smartphone and tablet utilization increase, almost threatening to make even the conventional laptop extinct, enterprise security will be forced to work overtime to secure their environment. Corporate firewalls and mobile antivirus systems are yet to face situations to improve, while cyber criminals are busy exploiting all possible vulnerabilities on the go. With leading security software and services vendors like McAfee scaring the IT industry with their announcement of record breaking 20 million new malware variants in 2010 alone, appropriate steps are needed definitely in the protection of mobile platforms from vulnerability exploitation.
The smartphone and tablet products today, are really powerful devices, with their use of advanced processors and also web OS kits. In the enterprise environment and corporate infrastructure, the last few years have seen dramatic changes with the use of next generation firewalls, and spam protection facilities. This was feasible with controlled equipment use and structured VPN systems. However the pocket sized gadgets of smartphones and tablets, totally fall out of the gamut of the security applications in existence today.
With social networking on the extreme rise, online dating sites, online gaming and similar high capacity processing operations in use commonly in day-to-day, the worries have multiplied. The Geinimi program, technically a Trojan, is an example of malware introduction through games apps, pirated or licensed being immaterial at this point of discussion, innovative methods of malware, linking your smartphone or tablet and homing it to a remote server are scary. Interestingly, when you try to uninstall it, new malware apps are introduced. Although, Android is Linux based and is less susceptible to malware, the risk still exists due to necessity of various apps needing to intercommunicate with each other, being the weak link in this context.
