What trends can we expect in 2013?
As we have
discussed in our previous Blog – Malware is an unwanted entity that costs
businesses more and more money year on year, so what can we ultimately expect
to see as 2013 progresses?
Stealing personal
data from mobile phones has been on the increase for a number of years now,
just last week BBC has highlighted how this is a serious risk. Malware poses
this very same threat to business data and this criminal activity is set to
increase 10 fold in 2013.
Juniper Research
estimate’s that in 2013 the number of users accessing banking services from
their mobiles will rise to 520 million people compared to approx. 300 million
in 2012. This rapid growth lends itself to malicious attacks as programmes are
developed rapidly and become more complex, in order to extract the financial
information stored on Mobile devices.
In addition
to this 2013 will see a shift in how threats are generated. Web servers will be
used as intermediaries’ more than ever before and once compromised they will be
employed to send out hyperlinks which will link to the Malware in question, all the stolen
information will be stored on this compromised server this way not involving
the thieves personal computers – this way avoiding detection.
Considering this, what
trends will we see for the rest of the year… Mobile, Mobile, and more
mobile?
Since 2010,
mobile malware has been slowly creeping up in number and complexity. This has
happened in line with the growth in use of smart devices, particularly as the
Android operating system positioned itself as the most popular mobile operating
system in the market worldwide. In 2011 Android became the most targeted
operating system and threats increased to that of almost double compared to
IOS.
This of
course makes sense, as their market rose, more and more people were using this
platform to store personal, corporate and financial log in’s/information. The
cybercriminals in turn developed Malware in order to steal this information and
use it for their own financial gain.
So
will this trend continue?
Since the launch of devices
like the IPhone - the smartphone and tablet market has rapidly evolved in several
areas: foremost technology, market, connectivity and infrastructure. This
technology is allowing for smartphones to buck the trend of ‘traditional’ computers
as a whole and the smartphone/ tablet market segment has experienced a year-on-year
growth rate of up to 66%
It is therefore not
difficult to see why Cyber criminals are focussing their efforts in this area.
As numbers are on the up, these criminals will want to attack this prosperous
area to gain the highest financial benefits while they can.
In addition to the rise
in device sales, the number of mobile Apps downloaded have drastically increased
over the course of time, and of course these are becoming a target for this
malicious code.
Another
factor that may reinforce this trend of mobile malware is Bring Your Own Device.
BYOD is becoming increasingly popular in many regions around the world, we
cannot say weather this trend is in for the long-haul but it is a worry that a
company's employees can carry and use personal devices such as laptops,
smartphones and tablets within the corporate day to day. Therefore vast amounts
of data and sensitive information will be stored onto these devices,
consequently BYOD could pose a grave security problem, if companies do not have
a robust Anti- malware system in place.
Taking
all of this information in to account it would be an intelligent assumption
that throughout 2013 and beyond, mobile malware will evolve and be
proportionate to and in parallel with technology; in other words, if the technology
has become widely used and constitutes a part of everyday life, threats for
such devices will follow close behind. The outlook is that the Android-based
malicious code is the main trend for computer threats in 2013, with this being
increasingly by means of Malware generation that takes power of compromised
sites.
The challenge for users generally
will remain the same as previous years. Adopting security solutions on their PCs
is paramount and furthermore Mobile security will become crucial. Users must
also to become aware of information security issues affecting this type of
technology they use on a day to day basis
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