IT Security Blog

Overlooking Mobile Phone Security

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phonesThe average person spends a lot of time and money on making sure that his personal laptop or desktop computer is secure. From firewalls to anti-virus software to spyware removers – all these kinds of software are installed onto computers to make sure that any kind of malware is kept out. But do you pay as much attention to security on your mobile phone?

According to a recent survey conducted in the UK, mobile phone users do not really pay that much attention to security. IT Pro has this story:

Results from a survey of UK mobile phone users has found too many of us are playing fast and loose with sensitive data stored on our mobile phones.

More alarmingly though, it also found that the majority (99 per cent) of those questioned also used their mobiles for business use, creating a potentially weak security link to their employers’ corporate systems.

So what kind of sensitive data is stored in mobile phones? I think that you can answer this yourself but let’s take a look at some of them:

• Bank account details
• PINs
• Passwords
• Social security numbers

More than these things, mobile phone users also admitted to accessing and storing business data on their phones. This includes downloading spreadsheets and other business documents.

The worst part is that despite the fact that this information is stored in mobile phones, the units themselves do not have passwords and other forms of security measures.

The bottom line? At the very least, we have to put passwords on our mobile phones. Even better, enable encryption.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/osde-info/763025492/sizes/s/

VoIP Going Mobile

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the latest in the N31 seriesSeveral companies are attempting to apply Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to mobile phones. T-mobile announced that they are going to launch mobile wi-fi cellular hybrids by the end of the year. Once these phones detect a Wi-fi connection they will automatically switch to the Wi-fi and connect calls through VoIP without interruptions.

Companies used VoIP technology to make calls are increasing, cutting down the cost of long-distance calls, but so far it’s been limited to office or home use. Cellular phone companies like Nokia have launched the N80 Internet Edition, their latest products with mobile phone-based VoIP. The road to this conversion has not been smooth, however. Last month major VoIP company Skype announced that there will be delays for their plans to expand their services to mobile phones due to technical difficulties and the lack of compatible handsets. But it’s certainly only a matter of time before users get a wide variety of VoIP-related services on their mobiles.

VoIP may end up being cheaper than conventional mobile calls, but the same security concerns that plague VoIP will apply to this developing technology. There are still encryption issues for the data packets sent over the Internet, and the possibility of having calls eavesdropped or even rerouted by attackers. The worst posssiblity would be a denial of service (DoS) attack that can degrade call quality or completely crash the end service. So far there has been no clear-cut solutions to these problems, and users must be aware that these security issues exist.

[tags]voip, mobile. security[/tags]