Your Mobile Phone is Infected! Banking App is Processing a Payment that you did not Initiate?

Mobile Malware is here to create havoc!The massive Mirai botnet DDoS attack on Dyn and other Internet companies has raised much concern over security. However, for many organizations, the new issue happens to be mobile security. The growing ubiquity and increased sophistication of mobile devices are starting to cause significant problems for organizations around the globe. A study by Ponemon Institute surveyed 600 IT companies and IT security practitioners and found 84% of them were concerned about malware threats to their mobile applications. An alarming 60% said a breach took place in their organization as a result of an insecure mobile application. The survey also revealed that no vulnerability assessment conducted on nearly 70% of mobile applications. Some 44% did not take any measure to protect their mobile environment. Despite risks, the organizations across the world seem to lack a sense of urgency to do anything about mobile security risks. Only 32% of the survey respondents urgently wanted to secure their mobile environment. Trend Micro after collecting data in 2016 from monitoring systems on networks of customers as well as data gathered from third party sources notes an increase in some unique Android malware samples from 10.7 million in 2015 to 19.2 million in Dec 2016. Mobile users globally are being targeted by exploits and rooting malware but for users in US adware and spyware pose the biggest problem. Ransomware emerged as another major threat detected by Trend Micro in 2016. The other main threats included mobile banking Trojans and increase in malware such as Dirty COW, Drammer and Quadrooter  which can gain root access on mobile devices. The Ponemon report showed many security problems due to the tendency to rush software release and to favor customer experience and flexibility, without giving adequate attention to security.CMO at Arxan, says one of the biggest findings is that organizations appear to be waiting for something big like a visible hack to start looking at mobile protection seriously.  “One of the mistake by organizations,” according to Khera. “One hack and it could set an organization back dramatically which can lead to financial loss, brand damage, recovery costs and even a drop in Stock prices.” “The top tier companies are doing a much better job of protecting themselves. However, many enterprises are falling behind,” Khera says. “ Hackers are finding mobile apps great places to attack since  these apps have binary codes that are vulnerable and unprotected.”