Securing Your Mobile Devices from Hackers – Why It’s Tricky & What You Can Do about It

Mobile platform is the software and hardware environment for smartphones, tabs, laptops, wearable and portable devices and this ... this is cybercriminals' Holy Grail.

New devices are launched on the mobile platform every day, creating new paths for security threats to infiltrate the platform and for hackers to pwn (get the better of) users like you and me.

They pose a big risk.

A compromised mobile device can turn your life upside down—from being able to afford the fine things in life to living in a truck—in a split of a second.

As new mobile devices and their applications continue to hit the mobile platform, we have to keep asking ourselves: What can we do to stay safe?  

The bad guys are racking their brains, wondering what they can do to get a hold of your personal data, financial information, and such.

If you are to get them before they get you, you have to look at the mobile platform through their lenses.

So, why are attackers increasingly targeting the mobile platform?

It’s simple, the mobile platform offers convenience. You can listen to music, make calls, respond to your work emails, play games, shop, do your online banking…all on your smartphone. It’s hard to say “No” to that.

Statista recently found out there are more than 21.5 billion interconnected devices out there.

It’s also estimated that more than 4.3 billion people use a device with an ARM chip every day and, make over 10 billion connections from mobile devices.

With such a staggering number of people to target, it’s no wonder hackers are busy!

The wearable devices are even worse, hackers have a tendency to target them yet by 2019, there were about 722 million connected wearable devices across the world.

Attackers prefer the mobile platform because of its numbers—which is why malware and security threats are crawling all over the mobile platform.

If you were an attacker, you would also want to target as many people as possible to increase your chances of success.

Malware and Trojans increase every year and, most of it is in banking, which we do on our smartphones.

A big percentage of the apps we install on our smartphones would also fail basic security threats test today.

So, what's important and, to who? There are different stakeholders in the mobile platform. And, what might be important to one stakeholder could pose a threat to another.

Mobile Platform Stakeholders

 Carriers

Mobile network operators sell the devices and support the devices’ services. Their business is supporting their users and providing an easy-to-use environment. Unfortunately, going by the “technology triangle”, the more we lean towards ease of use, the more we lose security and functionality.

Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)

OEMs create devices. Their main focus is creating the latest, coolest, and greatest devices. Sometimes, they want to implement some assets but the carriers won't have it. For example, when AT&T began allowing phone service over Wi-Fi, the OEM and the carriers conflicted for a while.

App Stores

App Stores include Apple, Google, Microsoft marketplace, Amazon and such. They’re interested in generate revenues for their environment from the apps they sell. That’s why most Amazon apps cannot be installed on an Android. Google won’t allow it.

Since Google is the Android OEM, you have to bypass the security to install an Amazon app. Apple is not any different. That’s a good security feature but…a closed environment is limiting.

Corporate IT

The IT personnel and the corporate IT environment is another security. They’re in charge of our work mobile devices. Almost everything is a threat to them.

End users

To end users, the threat could be one of the stakeholders violating their privacy by capturing data. They can easily gather crucial statistics and sell it to businesses.

End users on the other hand can pose a threat to the OS and the manufacturers. For example, if you decide to jailbreak or root your phone, you will have to bypass some security mechanisms that have been put in place by the manufacturer.

Having all these stakeholders, each with different goals, is what makes it hard for most people and companies to maintain security on mobile platforms.

See my next article, How to Protect Your Devices from Threats to know how to navigate through the murky waters of cyber attacks...