Threats & Vulnerabilities of Mobile Devices

With the increasingly ubiquitous nature of mobile devices and online availability, including smartphones and tablets, there is also an understandable concern about the level of security that is afforded to such devices. This can be considered as increasingly important given the proliferation of policies such as BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) which is being used by diverse organizations as a way of lowering the cost of ownership for such devices while also leveraging the flexibility advantages that their utilization can bring. It is therefore an area of immense interest due to the changing and emerging nature of both the technology itself as well as the security concerns.

Due to the sensitive and confidential information that would exist on such devices, it is imperative that security solutions and processes are implemented in order to protect and secure such content from the proliferation of threats and vulnerabilities which can affect mobile devices (Juniper Networks, n.d.).

Mobile devices are being exposed to a record number of security threats with potentially alarming statistics indicating a 400 percent increase in Android malware for example, while Wi-Fi connections are also being increasingly targeted. While the conventional desktop PC will still continue to serve important functions at both consumer and professional levels, there is an expectation that mobile devices will become the predominant form for accessing both personal and professional content it is understandable that cyber criminals have begun focusing on mobile devices which have at the same time grown their user base while substantially consolidating the operating system variants which makes the surface area for a potential attack substantially larger (...

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http://www.google.com/android/devicemanager

Sujithra, M., & Padmavathi, G. (2012). Mobile Device Security: A Survey on Mobile Device Threats, Vulnerabilities and their Defensive Mechanism. International Journal of Computer Applications.

Sujithra, M., & Padmavathi, G. (2012). Mobile Device Security: A Survey on Mobile Device Threats, Vulnerabilities and their Defensive Mechanism. International Journal of Computer Applications.

Abendan, G. (2013, August 8). Exploiting Vulnerabilities: The Other Side of Mobile Threats. Retrieved from Trend Micro: http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/exploiting-vulnerabilities-the-other-side-of-mobile-threats/

Wright, J. (2014). Five Wireless Threats You May Not Know. Retrieved from SANS: http://www.sans.edu/research/security-laboratory/article/wireless-security-1