With more people accessing the internet through mobile devices,its time to safeguard them against threats Often i get up in the morning to the buzz of a new message on my phone,mostly from someone selling me a flat in the suburbs,offering me a job as a typist or suggesting I do something about hair loss immediately. I am on the Do Not Disturb register,but who cares? Such pesky calls are avoidable if you are using smartphones,for all you need is a good mobile security software to keep them at bay. But for those using smartphones,unwanted calls or messages is a relatively small problem because the proliferation of these hand-held computers has made them the new target for cyber criminals. Symantec Corpss latest Internet Security Threat Report says the number of reported new mobile operating system vulnerabilities rose from 115 in 2009 to 163 in 2010. A relatively small number when you consider that 286 million new online threats nine new ones every second were detected in 2010. But the trouble is that most mobile threats and attacks go undetected due to the lack of protective software on these devices. There has been a definite shift from PC to mobile in the way people approach computing. It is expected that of the 400 million internet users in India by 2015,three-fourths will be accessing the Web through mobile devices, explains Effendy Ibrahim,internet safety advocate and Symantecs consumer business head for Asia. The threat to mobile devices has increased with the popularity of Android phones and the proliferation of unmonitored apps, he adds. Last year,most malware attacks against mobile devices took the form of Trojan Horse programs which posed as legitimate applications at times even inserting themselves into legitimate applications. Then,there is the ever present threat of phishing sites. While a protected PC will alert you as soon as you click a link from a suspicious site,nothing will stop you if you do the same on an unprotected mobile device. Things get scarier when you consider that more people have started accessing their bank accounts and share trading sites from their smartphones. To top it all is the risk posed by accessing websites and downloading information at unverified Wi-Fi hotspots. Symantec,as part of its Norton Everywhere initiative aimed at taking Web safety across devices,has already launched a beta version of the Norton Mobile Security for Android 1.5. The full-fledged version is expected to hit the Android market and Indian retailers by July. We have realised the importance of mobile security and want to make consumers aware of the need to secure their devices. Our product is based on the three pillars of security,safety and privacy, says Ibrahim. Security means protecting the device from rogue applications which can retrieve the users contact information,monitor traffic and map locations and misuse all this data. The security part of the product will lock the phone,create a back-up and wipe data remotely in case the phone is lost or stolen. As far as privacy goes,Norton will help the user block unwanted calls and SMSes while securing contact details on the phone, explains Ibrahim. Interestingly,the chances of losing a mobile phone are more in India than most other countries. In fact,53 per cent of adults in India reported having had their mobile lost or stolen since they started using one an average of 1.5 times over the past five years. Most of us know that stress and the new smartphones carry much more information than you would like to hand over to a stranger. Symantec is also working on taking its mobile security programme to other mobile operating systems like BlackBerry and IoS. Ibrahim says Norton is already in talks with tablet makers to provide protection to the latest creed of devices. Our aim is to get everyone on board.
