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According to security experts watching the evolving tech landscape, lost and stolen smartphones and other mobile devices are among the biggest mobile security threats to businesses today.
The risk of an employee leaving their smartphone behind at a meeting, restaurant or bar and having it fall into the wrong hands is far greater than an employee downloading malware onto their device, said Vikram Thakur, Symantec’s principle security response manager.
While malicious activity on mobile devices is rising, all the known cybercriminal monetization schemes on smartphones fail to reach the revenue achievable in Windows, Thakur said in an interview with SearchSecurity.com. The potential still exists for a sustained and exponential increase in mobile device attacks, but it will likely take years before cybercriminals flock from the desktop to mobile devices, he said. New payment technologies, such as near field communications (NFC), which can turn any smartphone into a virtual credit card, may make attackers take a closer look at mobile platforms, Thakur said.
“There is a lot more real estate that the desktop malware authors have at their disposal, so the desktop will remain the most lucrative for years to come,” Thakur said.
Security experts are quick to caution businesses from ignoring the future risks that smartphones pose to corporate data leakage. The attack surface is much greater on mobile devices and there are far fewer security controls, said Chris Wysopal.
SearchSecurity.com spoke to several experts about the top five mobile phone security threats for 2012.
Here’s what they had to say:
1. Geolocation madness
2. Excessive permissions
3. Mobile application vulnerabilities
4. Unsecure Wi-Fi
5. Lost and stolen device
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