Moving Target: Security Risks and the Mobile Work Force

 

Many people simply can't live without their smartphones. Sure they're convenient, but convenience has its costs. And with smartphones, that cost comes in the form of potential security risks to users and their employers. With users storing confidential data on their smartphones and mobile use growing quickly, the consumer and enterprise worlds are now worrying about the safety of their data and want to find new ways to protect it.

The New Frontier
Companies grapple with security issues on a daily basis. Systems need to be secured, hardware needs to be monitored, and threats need to be identified. Since computers and the internet are an everyday part of business, companies have established tactics to secure their systems. Unfortunately, some of those tactics also present special challenges for smartphones.

For smartphones and smartphonelike tablets, these security challenges are arising in businesses in multiple ways. According to its February 2010 report, "Wireless Security Trends: Planning Principles for a New Decade," research/advisory firm Gartner, Inc. sees a number of key mobile trends having an impact on enterprise security: the growing numbers of employees using personal devices not owned or managed by their employer for work tasks, companies failing to follow their own security procedures for wireless devices, and enterprises that opt for weaker wireless security for simplicity's sake.

Many companies that are already established names in desktop and enterprise security, such as Symantec Corp. and McAffee, Inc., now offer mobile solutions for multiple smartphone and tablet platforms. Khoi Nguyen, group product manager for Symantec's mobile security group, says the frequent use of smartphones and other mobile devices is quickly turning into a major concern for businesses.

"Security in general is a huge issue for enterprise customers regarding smartphones," says Nguyen. "It's become a top-of-mind issue today for a lot of enterprise customers because there [are] all these different people in their enterprise who are bringing in their iPads, and iPhones, and now Android tablets and so forth, and they're connecting them to enterprise assets like Exchange email, SharePoint, or just even connecting them to their PCs and laptops and copying information. There's a lot of risk in that."

The Perils of Poor Security

When people think of computer security, they usually think of viruses or malware. Smartphones aren't free from the threat of renegade programs and viruses, and in fact, they face similar problems to those confronting desktops. Nguyen says that one factor stimulating the appearance of malware on smartphones is the potential of financial gain for the creators.

"One key trend that we've seen on the PC side for the last few years is that there's been a shift in focus for the hackers from 'fame' to 'fortune,' where almost all of the PC threats today are focused on stealing some financial data or other data to enable the hacker to reap a financial gain from the malware they develop," says Nguyen. "We've seen the same transition on the smartphone side."
Nguyen says that one of the tactics used by malware creators is to develop apps that masquerade as legitimate programs to persuade users to install them. "There are some Trojan threats that will advertise themselves as a free game or a free application that will provide free internet access," he says. Once such an app is installed, it will covertly take steps to divert funds to its creators, such as automatically making purchases on a user's phone bill through paid SMS messages.

Consumers and businesses have a variety of options to choose from in malware protection. For example, Symantec offers antivirus and security support for several different mobile platforms on the consumer and enterprise levels.
Other companies are entering the mobile security field as well. …
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