Adoption of Android, an open source mobile device platform, is growing and millions of Android devices are being put into use every month, many of those with access to corporate networks. While many can argue that users have been waiting to upgrade to Apple’s latest iPhone 4 (launching this week), in the first part of 2010 Android based smartphones outsold iPhones for first time since its inception.
SMobile Systems, a provider security software for mobile devices, analyzed over 48,000 applications currently available on the Android market and discovered some scary facts. SMobile’s Global Threat Center discovered that:
• 20 percent of applications in the Android market grant a third party application access to private or sensitive information that an attacker could use for malicious purposes, such as Identity Theft, mobile banking fraud and corporate espionage; 5 percent of applications have the ability to place a call to any number, without requiring user intervention;
• Dozens of applications have the identical type of access to sensitive information as known spyware
• 2 percent of market submissions can allow an application to send unknown premium SMS messages without user intervention.
“The use of both company and employee-owned smartphones in the enterprise can have a dramatic and positive impact to productivity and efficiency. Concurrently, enterprises need to realize and accept that these mobile computing devices are performing the same functions as traditional computers and require the same types of Anti-Malware and endpoint security management and protection as their PC counterparts,” Daniel V. Hoffman, Chief Technology Officer for SMobile Systems tells SecurityWeek.
“There are individuals and organizations out there right now, developing malicious code designed to capture your most personal information and use it to their advantage,” said Neil Book, Chief Executive Officer of SMobile Systems.
The rapid increase in mobile devices accessing enterprise networks has led to an increase in the associated risks and breaches of security in the enterprise and it’s critical that companies increase efforts to protect mobile devices from malware, spyware and other threats.
Update 6/24/10 11:06AM EST: Headline changed to reflect tone