From app usage to location data, developers are siphoning consumer data and selling it to data brokers and advertisers for top dollar. And while this data may be inconsequential, at its core, this issue is about consumers’ right to privacy.
As organizations continue to adapt to life in the age of COVID-19, smartphones are set to take on additional responsibilities – even as the security limitations of these devices become ever more evident. Below, I’ve highlighted five key trends that are set to shape mobile security in 2021.
By now, it’s no secret that the endless quest by tech companies, data brokers and other players to capture, make sense of and monetize as much user data as possible – a practice known as surveillance capitalism – presents all sorts of privacy issues. Less discussed are the increased security risks this model creates for companies, governments and individuals.
As much of the world continues to hunker down at home in response to COVID-19, threat actors continue to find ways of exploiting the crisis to gather sensitive and valuable information from individuals. But while we’re busy making sure that our primary computers and cloud-based accounts are locked down, it’s often the devices we least suspect – our smartphones – that provide the opening that hackers need. The 2018 hacking of Jeff Bezos’s iPhone X, perhaps the most famous example of smartphone hacking, provides an important reminder that these most personal of devices should be used with appropriate caution, especially in this time of upheaval.
As companies throughout the world turn to teleworking as a way of continuing operations in the face of COVID-19, employees and security teams alike have understandably faced growing pains in adjusting to this new reality. Here are five easy-to-follow tips that remote employees can follow to mitigate the risk of digital surveillance while working from home.
Now that the list of victims of mobile spyware includes household names like Jeff Bezos, many security professionals are well aware that any commercial smartphone can be remotely compromised and essentially turned into a live bug that hears everything the user says and hears.
As if changing missions, resource shortages and salary pressures weren’t big-enough challenges, many federal workers must deal with another hurdle that’s been largely overlooked: smartphone bans.
