According to a the new Cisco report, cyber criminals are shifting their focus away from Windows based PCs to smart phones, tablets, and mobile platforms. Apple's platforms are also gaining popularity with the criminals. Cisco attributes this shift to the fact that "PC vendors are building better security into their products, and they are moving faster than ever to provide updates, alert users to potential flaws, and make patches available to users. This means it is becoming increasingly time-consuming and resource-intensive to find ways to exploit platforms that once were so lucrative-in particular, the Microsoft Windows platform."
The complete report is available here.
As more and more corporate executives start using smart phones and tablets, this poses new challenges for the information security professionals. People don't realize what personal information and other data are being extracted from their mobile phones by the various applications installed on them. A recent Wall Street Journal Investigation found that many of these smart phones share personal data widely and regularly.
Many financial and retail institutions started offering transactions through these devices, PayPal alone expects to process more $700 million mobile payments. Along with this jump in mobile usage, we now have more vulnerabilities in the mobile applications as well. Most of these vulnerabilities have been basic lapses such as storing authentication data in plain text, storing credit card and CVV numbers, etc. These vulnerabilities indicate that organizations are rushing into both development and release of such applications without implementing proper controls.
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