Is The Exchange Of Personal Information In Your Smartphone Secure?
Is your phone data secure enough? Pic: thetechjournalcomUS President Barack Obama once used a BlackBerry as his trusty smartphone of choice instead of other smartphone brands. This is because of BlackBerry’s superior security protocol which is said to be impenetrable.
The US Government, even generals at The Pentagon seems to be of the opinion that using a BlackBerry is a more secure option for everyday communication because its encryption deters attacks from spies and hackers.
But one wonders: just how protected and secure is your personal information in your smartphones?
Just how important is phone security?
According to a report published by emarketeer.com, an internet marketing services company, there are about 1.74billion smartphone users in the world this year.
Smartphones are getting more advanced day by day. Pic: www.foxnewscom With smartphones getting more advanced and software companies introducing more and more apps that take the work out of the physical world for us and into the virtual world, more people are dependent on their smartphones to handle their banking services, social interactions, written correspondence and personal messages, of which all contain very personal and sensitive information.
To understand the level of security of your smartphone, one has to know the operating system (OS) that the smartphone is running on. Apple’s iPhone, Android and Blackberry all has its own proprietary OS and although in general they aren’t one and the same, they however share quite similar risks and threats.
A smartphone can be quite vulnerable because once it is lost or stolen, the data stored could be accessed by some cunning and irresponsible individuals.
Such an ‘attack’ exploits the weaknesses of how information between smartphones travel through the air, which commonly includes the medium of SMS, MMS, Wi-Fi network or Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).
What’s worrying is that according to Sophos Security Threat Report 2013, Malaysia is the sixth most vulnerable country in the world to cybercrime. Last year, there was an increase of 5,592 cyber security incidents according to the CyberSecurity Malaysia, with over 1,403 incidents involving short malicious software or malware.
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