Market expansion for super-stealthy smartphones
Security for mobile devices is an expanding market, according to analyst research
Research into mobile security by market watcher Frost and Sullivan has pointed to a rise in organisations opting for specially designed, privacy-oriented smartphones as the BYOD trend continues.
Jean-Noël Georges, global IT programme director at Frost and Sullivan, said its H1 2014 research shows that mobile security risks and attacks are on the increase. Secure handsets targeting the military tend to be expensive but new releases, such as Silent Circle's Blackphone, could have broader appeal, he added.
"Going forward we will have what we would call secure by design. This is a major market that we are seeing, although [the technology] is not new," Georges told an audience of press and customer prospects in a web seminar presenting the research today. "Most of the time, companies and individuals will need to manage their [mobile] risk themselves."
He said that more organisations will look to take more responsibility for protecting themselves and mitigate the range of threats through authentication and encryption of mobile communications and employee mobile devices.
"We have seen last year and this year some new players are coming, such as Silent Circle, which is less security-focused than [Thales'] Teorem but still more secure, and could be a good option for individuals," Georges said.
Silent Circle's Android-based Blackphone, launched in February, features apps for peer-to-peer encrypted VoIP, encrypted messaging, and a more secure contacts-list app.
A paid subscription is required, and the P2P voice encryption capability is only available when calling another Silent Circle user.
Blackphone was also the subject of a successful rootkit attack at hacker conference Defcon this year, but the manufacturer has since gone on record saying that it doubts the demonstrated hack could take place in the wild.
Another device to aim at security-conscious customers might be the Enigma E2 cryptographic smartphone by Tripleton (pictured, below right), showcased at this year's Counter Terror Expo in London.
Priced at £1,320, it accepts any standard SIM but has another SIM card to send authenticated and encrypted calls and e-SMS in real time to other Enigma phones.
Thales' Teorem, on the other hand, is a fixed or mobile, 2G or 3G device managed centrally - rather than by the user - to encrypt data communications sent between two PCs, by voice or by SMS, according to the Thales website.
Georges said other military-grade mobiles on the market include Bull's Hoox m2, Sectra's TigerXS, and Boeing's Black.
More vertical markets are becoming aware of the risks of mobile, he told the web seminar.
And Frost and Sullivan's research had found that Western Europe - "anywhere with money" - is the most favoured target for hackers of mobile devices or apps, with 11 per cent of attacks discovered to be aimed at the UK and 23 per cent at France in the first half of 2014.
Organisations that had adopted BYOD policies could be more at risk, Georges suggested.
Premium-rate fake SMS attacks were common, as were different types of Trojan which could enter the device via an application and find vulnerabilities that expose the device's data or open up a route into the organisational networks to which a device might be connected, he said.
"A lot are targeting mobile payments or banking. We are seeing as well a large number of Trojans targeting Bitcoin, either to steal credit or increase the number of credits. The mobile attackers have three main strategies: threaten, monitise and control," Georges added.
About 18.1 per cent of the global 2014 mobile security solutions market is from sales to government; 16.2 per cent to healthcare sales; and 9.8 per cent to financial services, including insurance.
"Finance, banking and insurance sectors will also become more important in the next four years, and they will have to follow more rules as well," Georges said, referring to the increased need for compliance globally with new regulations.