By Yiannis Giokas
Smartphones have become a necessity, both in our business and personal lives. We use them to store an incredible amount of personal information, and this, unfortunately, has lured a number of adversaries who seek access to our data, identity and funds. So how secure are we when using our smartphones?
An end-to-end mobile security solution isn't available yet, and the current solutions that provide the highest security require reductions in scope and flexibility, which will affect users' experiences. This may involve expensive, specialized hardware and software, as well as reduced choices in devices and features. I don't expect users being thrilled with the idea of swapping their iPhones and Galaxys for bulky secure mobile devices or dropping any of the free popular apps such as WhatsApp and Viber. Apple is one of the few vendors that has been proven to be highly cognizant of privacy following the controversial San Bernardino and New York cases.
There are two levels of security:
So, How Can I Protect Myself?
Having developed and commercialized a threat intelligence platform under Crypteia Networks (now a PCCW Global company) and today leading the R&D team there, I see data privacy as a major concern -- and I don't foresee an easy way to remedy exposure.
So, what can enterprises do in order to protect themselves from possible fraud attempts and threats, and how they can achieve adoption and compliance in the shortest time span without investing huge amounts of money in proprietary devices for all their employees, or increasing IT complexity by deploying multiple platforms? The answer should be somewhere between using mobile devices that tend to push security fixes as soon as they are discovered, the introduction of a mobile device management (MDM) solution, and the selection of a set of commonly used apps as their key communication means that have enchanted security features.
A Market Opportunity
Entrepreneurs in the mobile security domain should continue to develop multi-platform and multi-vendor solutions, since the market is very lucrative and currently expanding. One interesting path to success might be for startups/vendors to develop telecom grade solutions for the mobile network operators (MNOs), enabling them to monitor users' traffic behavior and analyze suspicious events.
Yiannis Giokas is a serial entrepreneur with domain expertise in cybersecurity, data analytics and telecoms; currently, he is the Vice President of Research and Development at PCCW Global.
