The two largest computing trends that gained immense popularity last year have also cracked up the most complex security problems in the history of Internet. Mobile internet and cloud services offer users great flexibility and easy access to all information that we need on daily basis. These two features have also led to an increase in our vulnerabilities.
Mobile Trends
Ever since mobile computing came into existence, hackers and hijackers are concentrating upon cracking them. In the current year, several Android weaknesses came into light and following the rise in the recent past, it seems that the pace is picking up. Previously, defects in several Android devices took great advantage of various default apps installed on certain phones in order to access them.
During the first quarter of the year, Google withdrew its 21 applications from the Android market fearing a major malware scam. Consequently, Google beefed up its security even more while building Ice-cream Sandwich. The security team has identified several flaws in the security system that came up as a result of various features available on new Android phones.
iOS has also developed strong security measures for itself. Charlie Miller recently announced a key flaw in the security of Apple’s mobile OS. In response, Apple suspended him from the developer program. In the first quarter this year, a major iOS weakness stayed untreated for at least a week.
It is expected that in the coming year, platforms like iOS and Android will experience more malicious attacks. In fact, phones and tablets are rapidly becoming more like users’ wallets, since several mobile payment modes have come into existence. A lot of these devices are mostly connected permanently to social networks like Google+ and Facebook. This clearly shows that a major compromise can provide a lot of identity data to fraudsters and thieves. In 2012, security of these devices will be a debating issue.
Social Networking
Social networking has been quite old now; however, one should reassess the exact direction of security when the private photo archive of the CEO of the world’s largest social network is now publicly available.
When you run the world’s largest social networking website, security loopholes and hacking come naturally; hence, you are a big target. On the contrary, an even fascinating trend is emerging on the forefront. Instead of secret chat rooms and darknets, hackers are increasingly making use of social networking websites to coordinate and promote their activities.
Last year, under a joint collaboration of two major hackers groups, June’s Operation was rigorously advertised over Twitter. It was involved with cyber crimes against FBI and its several affiliated agencies. In fact, social networking websites have been widely used to mobilize powerful activist groups, for instance, the Occupy movement.
Cloud Security
The last trend, a highly debatable topic, is cloud security. All business bigwigs know that by putting out their entire business data over high speed internet they are exposing it to a whole lot of risks. But practically, these businesses aim to flock to the cloud to be able to cut down their colossal technology costs. Many corporations claim that this notion is false and does not represent their viewpoint.
Silicon Republic says that even today security is the major obstruction when you talk about entering your business information on the cloud. Only due to this reason, a lot of security companies are experiencing a major change and expect it to continue during the rest of the year.
Many people also believe that these cloud technologies still have a lot of room for improvement. However, this viewpoint is extremely ignorant. Practically, cloud mail storage has been providing services for the several years.
The web services of Amazon also have been functioning well for at least 6 years. On the whole, Amazon’s web services have been doing exceptionally well and there have been very few security incidents. Virtual desktop and online accounting services are a little less developed, but strongly secured among other cloud services.