Your Life in Your Hands: Mobile Device Security | LMG Security

As many people know, Apple has been in the hot seat recently due to its somewhat devastating App Store breach. (If you haven’t heard about it, you can read up on it Here!) This breach was not only a large problem for iOS users, but also for the mega-corp whose products have long been famous for being impossible to hack–aside from “jailbreaking” iPods and iPads, which leaves the device vulnerable to malware.

With mobile device security, as it turns out, there is one way in which hackers can infect our beloved Apple devices without our consent. Malware can be piggybacked into the App Store system through otherwise legitimate programs.

Although Apple responded quickly to analyze and remove any infected apps, the damage had already been done. Hundreds of millions of people have been affected by the breach so far, and that number could very well end up rising up into the billions.

While this event has brought about a flurry of bad publicity for Apple, iPhones are still the most secure mobile phone on the market. There is only one way to download apps on iOS devices, and 99.99% of the time the App Store is safe.

Without jailbreaking an iPhone, there is no way to download applications from outside sources, but with android phones, an open-sourced download system is the name of the game.

Android uses the “Google Play Store” as the digital distribution platform from which all android apps can be obtained. Due to the fact that the Android is primarily an open-sourced operating system, there is much less policing and regulation involved with the apps for that platform. It is much easier for malware, more specifically  spyware, to make its way into the system and on to your phone.

Why does this matter?

Think about all of the personal information we access through our mobile devices. Bank statements and account numbers, phone calls–even our social security numbers can be accessed with malware that has snuck into our phone’s operating system through an infected app.

While this is a very real problem, software and habit maintenance is a viable solution.

If you have any questions about the security of your devices, LMG Security would be happy to help through our digital forensics and application testing services, which are available for mobile devices. Send an e-mail to [email protected] to get yourself on the right track to a more secure mobile phone.