MWC 2008: Mobile security concerns grow

Almost 90 per cent of mobile users are worried about the security risks their devices are exposed to, yet worryingly a high percentage (79 per cent) are still happy to carry on knowingly using handsets that leave them unprotected from such threats.

That is the stark contrast revealed by research released today at Mobile World Congress (aka 3GSM) by security specialist McAfee, which highlights that 86 per cent of users are aware of and worried about issues such as information loss and theft and fraudulent bill increases.

Almost three quarters (72 per cent) admitted that they are concerned about the security of popular and emerging mobile services such as multimedia downloads, payments and ticketing, yet more than half (59 per cent) of people lay blame at operatorsdoors, suggesting that the industry, rather than users, should be held as the primary party responsible for security measures.

"The key headline for me is that 86 per cent of people are actually concerned about the risk of using mobile phones," said Greg Day, security analyst at McAfee. "I'm glad to see that awareness is that high as the perception is that lots of people look at a phone and think it is just a phone, whereas it's more of a mini PC, depending on what phone you have."

However, despite the increased awareness, there is still an element of complacency hindering speed of reaction to the problem that, although small today, is likely to grow rapidly, Day warns.

"We've had 15-20 years of these problems on our PCs and learned a lot of lessons. The average person has security on their PC to deal with this, but only a (small percentage) on mobiles. It's getting to the point where maybe we've been burned a little or know someone who has, but we're still not responding to that," he said.

Given that people are storing more and more personal information, such as PINs and account numbers, on their mobiles, these devices have so much more value than just their handset resale, making them even more lucrative bounty for criminals, according to Day.

"We will keep having to fight battles with the cyber criminals in the PC space but this new (mobile) war ground is infinitely bigger and far less protected. Cyber crime is no longer a great train robbery where you steal in one big hit. If you take £1 from each of those people it's quite nice revenue," he said.

"My overall concern is that there are so many instances where we learn by only putting our hand in fire. This is a great opportunity where we can learn from other problems (in the PC space) and not make the same mistakes. The problem is there and growing and we don't want it to get to the point where it becomes huge before everybody reacts."

McAfees research was conducted by analyst Datamonitor, who surveyed some 2,000 mobile consumers in the UK, US and Japan.