Q. The Safest Mobile Device? A. Depends
Depends?!? Well, isn't that the answer to a lot of things in this world? Often our answer depends on the context of the question. Sometimes the answer depends on who you ask since it may only be an opinion or a feeling. Sometimes the answer is based on a survey, which is a moment in time, and might change a day later. I write a lot about secure mobile access, especially to the enterprise, so I'm obviously interested in any stories about the risks of mobile devices. There were a couple over the last few weeks that really caught my attention since they seemed to completely contradict each other. Earlier in the month, SC Magazine had a story titled, RSA 2013: iOS safer than Android due to open app model, patching delays which covered much of what many already feel - due to Apple's controlled ecosystem, the apps that are available are less of a risk to a user. They made note of the McAfee Threats Report which says Android malware almost doubled from the 2nd to 3rd quarter of 2012. Then just last week, also from SC Magazine, an article titled, Study finds iOS apps to be riskier than Android appeared. What? Wait, I thought they were safer. Well, no apparently. But before I go any further, I do need to mention that the author of both articles, Marcos Colon (@turbomarcos) does reference his first article and says, 'Security concerns surrounding the Android platform have always taken a back seat to that of iOS, but a new study challenges that notion,' so slack has been extended. :-) Anyway, according to an Appthorityreport, iOS apps pose a greater risk and has more privacy issues (to users) than Android. Appthority's 'App Reputation Report' looked at 50 of the top free apps available on both platforms and investigated how their functionality affects user privacy. They looked for “risky” app etiquette like sending data without encryption, sharing information with 3rd-parties, and gaining access to the users' calendars. (Chart) In this particular study, in almost all the cases, iOS gave access to the most info. Of the 50 apps, all of them (100%) sent unencrypted data via iOS but 'only' 92% sent clear text on Android. Tracking user location: 60% on iOS verses 42% on Android. Sharing user data with third-parties: 60% on iOS verses 50% on Android. When it comes to accessing the user's contacts, something we really do not like, 54% of iOS apps accessed the contact list compared to only 20% on Android. One of biggest differences, according to the article, is that at least on Andriod users are presented with a list of content the app wants to hook and the user can decide - on iOS, permissions can be changed once the app is installed. To claim one device is either 'safer,' or 'riskier' is somewhat a moot point these days. Any time you put your entire life on a device and then rely on that device to run your life, there is risk. Any time we freely offer up private information, there is a risk. Any time we rely on others to protect our privacy and provide security, there is a risk. Any time we allow apps access to personal information, there is risk. But like any potential vulnerability, individuals and organizations alike, need to understand the potential risk and determine if it something they can live with. Security is risk management. To top all this off and really what made me write this, was an @GuyKawasaki tweet titled Love Logo Swaps and among the many twists on brands, was this one: And it all made sense. ps Related: RSA 2013: iOS safer than Android due to open app model, patching delays Study finds iOS apps to be riskier than Android Smartphone hacking comes of age, hitting US victims 6 Steps To Address BYOD: A Security Management Roadmap 10 Awesome Logo Swaps Inside Look - F5 Mobile App Manager Is BYO Already D? Will BYOL Cripple BYOD? Freedom vs. Control BYOD–The Hottest Trend or Just the Hottest Term BYOD 2.0 – Moving Beyond MDM with F5 Mobile App Manager Technorati Tags: mobile device,smartphone,ios,android,privacy,safety,security,silva,byod,mam,f5,risk Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:This Blog May Have Jumped the Shark
Really? Already?!? For whatever reason, the phrase 'Jump the Shark' has been jumping out at me recently. From the Jump the Shark Hat Tutorial to watching past episodes of Supernatural on Netflix to Cloud Computing to the many #jumptheshark tags added to tweeps tweets. Originally linked to the Happy Days episode where the water-skiing Fonz jumps over a shark, it has since become the term to describe when writer's storylines have moved into the absurd and the show itself quickly deteriorates. Today it is attached to almost anything that has either hung around too long, is past it's prime or is simply fallen off the hype-cliff. I sometimes feel this way after producing a bunch of videos (like the last two weeks) and need to get back to writing...like this entry. So I decided to investigate a couple recent hype technologies (that I also write about) and if they've already Jumped the Shark. Rumblings of Cloud Computing jumping the shark came as early as 2009 and 2010. In 2009 PCWorld ran an article titled, Has Cloud Computing Jumped the Shark? talking about the different definitions of cloud, which company prefers what definition and the rush of vendors into the space. In 2010, a ServerWatch article titled, Did Cloud Computing Jump the Shark? discusses how various analyst firms view and predict cloud's future along with the differing opinions about it's hype and hope. Another 2010 article from ebizQ titled Has Cloud Computing Jumped the Shark? references another Infoworld article named Confessions of a cloud skeptic which, in the first sentence says, "the cloud" has jumped the shark. There are many more articles from 2010 wondering if Cloud has become chum. I think this was due to the hype, battling opinions on just what cloud is/was and eventually can be, along with the types - SaaS, PaaS and IaaS and the categories of public, private, hybrid. Now some 3 years later, has it officially jumped, crashed or landed safely on the other side? Depends on who you ask. Throughout 2012, there were plenty of articles titled 'Cloud Computing is Here to Stay' filled with survey results, anecdotal evidence and analyst cites. At RSA this year, however, I heard a few folks say that the term 'Cloud' was forbidden to be uttered in the Expo Hall. While the term itself has been overused, abused, misconstrued, and has probably Jumped the Shark, the underlying technology/philosophy will be a part of an organization's hybrid and distributed infrastructure for years to come. Mobility is one of the main cloud drivers. Which brings me to my other check. Has BYOD Jumped the Shark? Maybe. Or it might be heading up the ramp. Almost every pundit thinks BYOD, using one's personal device for work, will be the trend of the year for 2013 but some are questioning that. A few weeks ago I wrote Is BYO Already D? talking about the few surveys indicating that BYOD could cost more than imagined including The Aberdeen Group who says BYOD could cost organizations 33% more than a IT owned mobile device plan. The Nov 2012 CITEWorld article titled Has BYOD jumped the shark? One researcher thinks so also talks about the Aberdeen research but adds a research note from Nucleus which predicts that BYOD will decline as enterprise mobility heats up. They explain that support costs, compliance risks and usage reimbursement will lead to higher TCO with no discernable ROI or productivity gains. While I don't think that BYOD has officially moved to the absurd, for 2013 I do think organizations will better understand the BYOD implications and how it fits in the overall Enterprise Mobility strategy. Enterprise Mobility includes BYOD, managed devices and other communication tools, including laptops potentially. Just like cloud, I think organizations will have a mix of options to support a mash of devices - including those you use at or bring from home. There will still be IT issued fully managed devices (that require a VPN tunnel) for years to come mixed in with unmanaged personal devices where just the corporate data and apps are under IT control. This is the BYOD 2.0 stuff we've been talking about with the F5 Mobile App Manager. So while the term BYOD might be starting to hit saturation, Enterprise Mobility should be the focus. Access to any app, from any device, from anywhere. So, has this blog Jumped the Shark? While some of the topics, err, terms I cover might be candidates, only you can determine if/when I've crossed into that absurdity realm. I do hope you'll let me know when I start resembling a cool dude wearing a leather jacket while water skiing. ps Related: Has Cloud Computing Jumped the Shark? Has Cloud Computing Jumped the Shark? Did Cloud Computing Jump the Shark? 10 Facts That Prove Cloud Computing is Here to Stay Enough Already! Cloud Computing Is Here to Stay Has BYOD jumped the shark? One researcher thinks so Is BYO Already D? The new trend in mobile security: Separating work and personal stuff Inside Look - F5 Mobile App Manager BYOD 2.0 – Moving Beyond MDM with F5 Mobile App Manager BYOD–The Hottest Trend or Just the Hottest Term HELLO, My Name is Cloud_009 When Jump the Shark jumped the shark Technorati Tags: jumptheshark,cloud computing,cloud,byod,mobile device,hype,f5,silva Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:Inside Look - F5 Mobile App Manager
I meet with WW Security Architect Corey Marshall to get an Inside Look and detailed demo of F5's Mobile App Manager. BYOD 2.0: Moving Beyond MDM. ps Related: F5's Feeling Alive with Newly Unveiled Mobile App Manager BYOD 2.0 – Moving Beyond MDM with F5 Mobile App Manager F5 MAM Overview F5 BYOD 2.0 Solution Empowers Mobile Workers Is BYO Already D? Will BYOL Cripple BYOD? Freedom vs. Control F5's YouTube Channel In 5 Minutes or Less Series (23 videos – over 2 hours of In 5 Fun) Inside Look Series Technorati Tags: f5,byod,smartphone,mobile,mobile device,saas,research,silva,security,compliance, video Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:The Prosecution Calls Your Smartphone to the Stand
Or Bring-Your-Own-Defendant A very real legal situation is brewing is the wake of the bring your own device phenomena. #eDiscovery. You might be familiar with some of the various legal or liability issues that should be addressed with a BYOD policy, like privacy, the loss of personal information, working overtime or the fact that financial responsibility may dictate legal obligation. Now, technology law experts are saying that if your company is involved in litigation, criminal or civil, personal mobile devices that were used for work email or other company activity, could be confiscated and examined for evidence as part of the investigation or discovery process. So if you use your personal smartphone for work related activities and your company is involved in a lawsuit, there may come a point where the court might subpoena your phone to see what relevant evidence might be contained. During litigation, the organization itself may have the legal obligation to sift through your mobile device for related information. If sued, companies are required to make a good-faith effort to retrieve data - where ever that may be. That includes your email, GPS history, text messages, cell phone records, social media accounts, pictures and any other info that could be pertinent to the case. This is proprietary company owned data that resides on my personally owned device. This is especially true of your corporate email co-mingles with your personal email - meaning delivered through the same email app or program. In fact, according to this article, a judge recently sanctioned a company for a discovery violation because it did not search the BYOD devices during discovery. Some people seem to lose all sense of daily human functioning when social networks like Facebook, Twitter and others are unavailable for a short period of time. We've become so attached to our mobile devices and they have become the center of our lives...imagine not having that pacifier for a few days. OMG, I've time-traveled the 1980's and have no way of announcing it to the world!! What am I going to do now that I can't re-tweet that funny cat picture! I'm so lost without you, oh electronic appendage. As more organizations embrace or even require BYOD in the workplace, it becomes even more critical to be able to separate personal and work profiles. It is important that the corporate data and apps do not mingle with the already present personal data. Solutions like F5's Mobile App Manager provides a fully enclosed virtual enterprise workspace and creates a secure footprint on the device for enterprise data and access only. MAM allows organizations to safely separate personal data and usage from corporate oversight and controls how employees access key corporate information. ps Related: Use your personal smartphone for work email? Your company might take it BYOD Lawsuits Loom as Work Gets Personal BYOD and Delta Airlines Privacy Lawsuit BYOD gets messy with AT&T class action lawsuit Is BYO Already D? BYOD Policies – More than an IT Issue Part 1: Liability BYOD Policies – More than an IT Issue Part 2: Device Choice BYOD Policies – More than an IT Issue Part 3: Economics BYOD Policies – More than an IT Issue Part 4: User Experience and Privacy BYOD Policies – More than an IT Issue Part 5: Trust Model BYOD 2.0: Moving Beyond MDM (pdf) Inside Look: F5 Mobile App Manager Technorati Tags: ediscovery,legal,courts,litigation,byod,discovery,lawsuit,policy,liability,silva,f5,mam,mobile device,smartphone Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:Mobile Threats Rise 261-percent in Perspective
A new report from ABI Research indicates that the number of unique mobile threats grew 261% in just two quarters. As mobile functionality grows so does the vulnerability threat vector as mobile malware is starting to target certain systems. This is certainly a concern for those organizations rolling out BYOD initiates. You've heard athletes and coaches talk about giving 110%, which is obviously impossible, but some of the recent mobile malware growth numbers are huge, like on the order of 1700%. To gain some perspective, I wanted to know what else in the world is growing at 261%. Here's what I found. Real Estate: According to this article, the Guangzhou City Housing Authority in 2012 said, Guangzhou hand house prices rose to 14,044 yuan from 3888 yuan, or up to 261%, while the national the national urban average house rose 143% - if I understood the article correctly. US Household Debt: This article from June 2012, reported that household debt as a percentage of disposable income from 1989 to 2004, for the first four income quintiles and the top two deciles, the increase in debt per family was 261%, 170%, 131%, 90%, 103%, 93%. So during the credit boom the poorest families increased their debt, proportionally, the most. It has now dropped to 2004 levels of around 110% on average. Mobile Ad Impressions: TechCrunch wrote back in December 2011 (Dec 30th, specifically), that mobile ad impressions on the new (at the time) Kindle Fire grew 261% on Christmas Day 2011. Mobile ad network Millennial Media reported that as consumers opened and used their new Kindle Fires, ad impressions increased even more. As millions of consumers unwrapped new Kindle Fires, Millennial saw an average daily growth rate of 113 percent. On December 24, impressions grew 32 percent; and on Christmas day in particular, impressions on the Kindle Fire grew 261%. mCommerce: Research by IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index showed that there was solid growth in Internet retail sales in October 2012. British shoppers have been said to spend £6.7billion online and October 2012 saw 261% growth year on year. Weather/Rainfall: Rainfall in New Delhi during February 2013 was 261% above normal. Apparently during that month, the active wet spells were a result of stronger than normal westerly winds in upper levels along Delhi latitude. An official was quoted saying, 'The low level wind anomaly over northwest Bay of Bengal and northeast Arabian Sea was southeasterly which facilitated enhanced moisture convergence over Delhi and adjoining areas.' Gaming Casinos: A survey of 3,035 New England residents found that more than twice as many Massachusetts residents visited Twin River and Newport Grand Casinos as Rhode Island residents in 2012, continuing a six-year trend that saw the number of visits from Bay State residents to the Lincoln-based casino skyrocket by 261%. This may change soon however once Massachusetts opens three resort-style casinos. Payday Loans: Larger banks started to jump into the lucrative payday loan business in 2010 and 2011 since, they can loan $100 for a $7.50 fee, an annualized interest rate of 261%. As the banks like to point out, it is less than the 400-plus% charged by many payday lenders. The 1970s: While That 70s Show kicked off the careers of a few actors (T Grace, A Kutcher, M Kunis and others), the 70's was a period of high inflation with overall prices rising 261% during the decade. According to How Much Would £10 Have Bought You Over The Years?, during the 70s £10 would have bought one of the very first baby car seats for a new family, or a food mixer for a budding chef. There were a couple others like ACCESS Bank posts 261% profit growth, shares of Time Warner Cable have risen 261% since the spinoff from Time Warner in 2009, and the fact that an income of $30,000 is 261% of the poverty level to qualify for certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act. 261% of anything is a significant jump in growth and clearly the rise mobile malware is no exception. Hopefully comparing it to other areas that had the same growth helps in understanding the significance today and maybe my blog will have a 261% increase in readership. I thought about playing 2-6-1 for the Daily 3 lottery but that was drawn on March 30, 2013. ps Related: BYOD and Increased Malware Threats Help Driving Billion Dollar Mobile Security Services Market in 2013 BYOD, malware to drive mobile security market to $1.88bn in 2013:report Complex malware and BYOD drive mobile security First-Known Targeted Malware Attack On Android Phones Steals Contacts And Text Messages Mobile Malware Growth Continuing in 2013 BYOD 2.0 – Moving Beyond MDM with F5 Mobile App Manager Inside Look - F5 Mobile App Manager Technorati Tags: f5,mobile device,malware,security,byod,smartphone,risk,261%,silva,research,survey Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:The First Six Remix
With 2013 cruising along and half the year in the rear view, I thought a rest stop with all the off-ramps thus far would catch you up on this road trip. 67 stops, 44 watchable. BYOD Behavior - Size Does Matter In 5 Minutes or Less - PCoIP Proxy for VMware Horizon View Inside Look - PCoIP Proxy for VMware Horizon View Is 2013 Half Empty or Half Full? Small Business is a Big Target TechEd2013 – The Video Outtakes TechEd2013 – That’s a Wrap TechEd2013 – Gimme 90 Seconds Betcha Didn’t Know Edition (feat. Simpson) TechEd2013 – NVGRE with Microsoft’s System Center 2012 VMM (feat. Korock) TechEd2013 – The Top 5 Questions TechEd2013 – Secure Windows Azure Access TechEd2013 – Network Virtualization & Cloud Solutions TechEd2013 – Find F5 iRules - Is There Anything You Can't Do? FedRAMP Federates Further Interop2013: The Video Outtakes 50/50 Odds for BYOD Interop2013: That's a Wrap Interop2013: DDoS'ing Interop Follow Up Interop2013: Partner Spotlight – ICSA Labs Interop2013: Partner Spotlight - Big Switch Networks Interop2013: BIG-IQ Cloud Interop2013: F5 Certification Program Interop2013: DDoS'ing Interop Interop2013: Find F5 F5 Tech Talk - Streamline, Secure and Optimize XA and XD Deployments Targets of Opportunity The Prosecution Calls Your Smartphone to the Stand Most of the Time We Get it Wrong Conversation with One of CloudNOW’s Top 10 Women: Lori MacVittie Ride The Crime Coaster Mobile Threats Rise 261% in Perspective Q. The Safest Mobile Device? A. Depends Every Day is a 0-Day Nowadays This Blog May Have Jumped the Shark Pulse2013 - IBM Technology Evangelist Kathy Zeidenstein RSA2013 & Pulse2013 - The Video Outtakes Pulse2013 – That’s a Wrap Pulse2013 – IBM Maximo Optimization & SSO with BIG-IP APM Pulse2013 – BIG-IP ASM & IBM InfoSphere Guardium Pulse2013 – Gimme 90 Seconds: IBM Edition Pulse2013 - Find F5 RSA2013: That’s a Wrap RSA2013: Interview with Jeremiah Grossman RSA2013: BIG-IP DNS Services RSA2013: BIG-IP SSL/TLS Services RSA2013: F5 RSA Security Trends Survey RSA2013: Partner Spotlight – Quarri RSA2013: Partner Spotlight – Websense RSA2013: Gimme 90 Seconds Security Edition RSA2013: Find F5 RSA2013: Aloha from RSA Inside Look: BIG-IP ASM Botnet and Web Scraping Protection Inside Look - F5 Mobile App Manager BYOD 2.0 – Moving Beyond MDM with F5 Mobile App Manager In 5 Minutes Guest Edition - BIG-IP LTM Integration with Quarri POQ Is BYO Already D? 16 Racks (16 Tons Parody) Inside Look - BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager Inside Look - SAML Federation with BIG-IP APM In 5 Minutes or Less: BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager Solving Substantiation with SAML Security Bloggers Network Voting HELLO, My Name is Cloud_009... Inside Look - Enterprise Manager v3.1 Lost Records a Day Shows Doctors are Blasé Is TV's Warm Glowing Warming Glow Fading? ps Technorati Tags: f5,big-ip,silva,blogs,devcentral,2013,video,byod,security,cloud,mobile device Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:
