Only 5 per cent of smartphones & tablets are protected says Juniper

Rating: Despite the fact that good security apps are free

Despite the publicity given to malware, fraud and device theft and the fact that many of the leading and respected mobile security applications for smartphones such as avast! are actually free, the vast majority of smartphones and tablets apparently remain unprotected. According to a new report from Juniper Research only 5 per cent of global smartphones and tablet devices have security software installed. The report, ‘Mobile Security Strategies: Threats, Solutions & Market Forecasts 2012-2017‘ forecasts that both corporate and personal users will begin to recognise the need to protect their data. It also predicts that the demand for mobile security products will increase over the next five years to a point where 20 per cent mobile devices will be protected by third party security software. That’s still a massive 80 per cent left unprotected.Curiously, Juniper Research has found that key security features which this GoMobile News hack saw demonstrated by years ago by Synchronica back in 2006 (see here) are only now being sought after by users.

The Synchronica demo was so long ago that the company has moved away from security to specialise in messaging these days! (See GoMo News passim here.)

Anyway, Juniper is urging mobile operators and device vendors need to recognise the potential value that can be achieved by integrating key security features such as ‘Track the Device’ or ‘Lock and Wipe’ into their product offerings for customers.

However, the new report did find that, as the security threat increases, end users become more aware of these issues.

“Bundling mobile security apps along with other managed services will not only provide incremental revenue for the service providers, but will also help them guarantee better customer satisfaction and [reduce] churn,” observed Nitin Bhas, the report’s author.

Whilst apart malware attacks on phones will grab the headlines – ‘phishing’ or identity theft will be a strong motivator for users to adopt mobile security software, according to Juniper Research.

In the enterprise arena, despite the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) phenomena, the number of protected consumer devices will overtake protected enterprise devices by 2015.

Nevertheless, Juniper Research predicts that employee owned smartphones and tablets used in the enterprise will reach almost 350 million by 2014.

A whitepaper, ‘Mobile Security ~ Safe and Secure Devices’, should eventually become available to download from the Juniper website here, although it wasn’t there when we looked today [25th September 2012].