What’s Next For Mobile Security

With new security vulnerabilities being exposed everyday through the internet either through the cloud or mobile devices does the next big boom in software center towards mobile security, data security, identity theft management?

It would seem that daily new hacking attacks have taken place where valuable customer information is compromised or the ability to take down a site or in the case of Amazon entire company infrastructures and the consequent business disruption to the many businesses that run the Elastic compute cloud (EC2) platform is becoming an easy target for hackers.

The holes in security for mobile devices especially cell phones and tablets is especially easy to pickpocket your personal information from. Should this not be a priority when evaluating both enterprise software and even personal devices, how does it handle network and personal security.   If a hacker wants in there is not much you can do to stop that however there are precautions that if taken would make it considerably more difficult to penetrate which may dissuade some.

Although it is upto the manufacturer to provide the necessities of a basic security foundation the consumer must also take responsibility in defining their mobile security strategy. This should be approached with the vigour as an IT enterprise strategy.  This lack of security provides an opportunity for wireless carriers to partner with the security software and sell it as part of their monthly service.  An opportunity for mobile security software vendors to step-up into the forefront to force adoption – smaller players here may even have more of an opportunity here to capture market share.   Perhaps cell phone carriers will bundle a security app with their phone or even charge extra on your monthly bill should you opt for the extra protection.

The vulnerability of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and even laptops are proving to be a security nightmare for IT departments.  With bring your own devices (BYOD) to work now tolerated by companies put highly sensitive company information in jeopardy where that may not have been such a big issue as it has now become.  Will IT departments have to adopt and install new mobile device management (MDM) solutions just to keep upgrades and tracking of those devices not mention syncing and then most importantly security ?

Just recently, some companies are offering security for mobile devices specifically which has become a necessity now as online payment options become more common.  If this security resides in the cloud where will the data be stored with the cell phone vendor in their data center, on the hardware itself or in the cloud of the security software ?  How will the user be able to access and change the information, another set of user ids and passwords to remember. Wasn’t biometrics supposed to replace many of the tedious login procedures.  Perhaps cell payments should look more closely at biometrics for fingerprints as the authorization of payments.  Would you not sacrifice a couple of seconds to be more secure and have your identity protected ? With the state of technology now validation can be just as quick if designed properly.  As far back as 15 years ago I was experimenting with biometrics for POS transactions with some success, but at the time it was still fairly expensive and middleware was needed to feed the main systems with much decoding which increased costs rapidly.

Eval‐Source is a consulting firm that provides enterprise software selection and strategic technology consulting services for organizations. Our consulting practices encompass cloud and on-premise software evaluation services, ERP, Supply Chain strategy, social media and technology consulting. Eval‐Source is an industry leader in the analysis of software technology and our thought leadership has placed us in the elite of consulting/analyst firms. What sets us apart is our unbiased best in class consulting services that provide our clients with value, direction and success in selection, planning and infrastructure planning of their technology systems. www.eval-source.com    on Twitter @eval_source