Mobile devices bring incredible benefits in terms of productivity and efficiency in the workplace and for personal use. But there’s a catch: “The ways smart phones, laptops and tablets interconnect work life and personal life raise serious security challenges for organizations—and the stakes are high,” according to Alastair MacWillson, global managing director of Accenture’s global security practice and SecurityWeek columnist. “In addition to being prone to loss or theft, customized hardware and open source operating systems mean patches aren’t centrally managed and anti-virus software isn’t often deployed resulting in an inconsistent security posture. As a result, the multiple security risks posed by mobile devices need to be carefully managed,” MacWillson adds.
According to metrics coming from Juniper Research (Not to be confused with Juniper Networks), despite an increase in mobile threats, currently less than 1 in 20 smartphones and tablets have third party security software installed.
Market forecasts from Juniper Research suggest that this will change as organizations and individuals acknowledge the need to protect their mobile devices, and will create a $3.6 billion opportunity for mobile security software providers by 2016.
The mobile security opportunities report from Juniper Research found that mobile security software is rapidly becoming as essential on a handheld as it is on a desktop or notebook computer. The increasing popularity of smartphones and tablets makes this particularly relevant as many users are now accustomed to accessing e-mails, websites and performing online transactions on the move, thereby storing more and more potentially sensitive data.
“We believe that the market for mobile security products will go mainstream by late 2013 as the vulnerability of data centric mobile devices becomes more widely appreciated both in the business and consumer sectors,” said Report Author Nitin Bhas. “High-profile security alerts are likely to heighten the public’s awareness of this growing issue.”
Other key findings include:
• Enterprise security market for tablets, smartphones and feature phones will contribute towards 69% of the total mobile security product sales revenue by 2016.
• Juniper believes that as more tablets are brought into the enterprise over the forecast period, the proportion of tablets featuring security product will also increase and will overtake the protected smartphone user levels.
• 277 million mobile devices will have some kind of protection installed by 2016
According to Idan Aharoni, Head of Cyber Intelligence for the FraudAction Intelligence team at RSA and SecurityWeek columnist, it seems that cybercriminals, similar to the legitimate users, are jumping on the mobile bandwagon and adapting to it relatively quickly. “Like in the 90s, this relatively new platform boasts many opportunities for the shrewd cybercriminal, while many users are oblivious to the potential threats. We’ve already started seeing the buds of mobile malware. We can only assume that we’ll start seeing them blossom in the near future.”
Related Reading: The Coming of Mobile Malware – Still Rare, but no Less Sinister Than Their PC Counterparts
Related Reading: Rethinking Cybersecurity in a Mobile World
