Security Concerns and Mitigation Strategies

Unit 8 Assignment 1 Security Concerns and Mitigation Strategies

A networked technology that I use at home, at work, and at my personal convenience along with almost everyone else is my cellphone. Our cellphone’s are at a high risk of potential threats at nearly all times of the day. Some of the threats cell phones faces are simple that should be quick to mitigate while others may take a hacker trying to get access to your cell phone.

First and foremost the first thing that most people fail to enable on their cell phones as well as myself is a password or way to authenticate the user. All I have to do is swipe the screen and I’m in. It’s quick, it’s convenient, and it’s very unsecure. The best way to mitigate this is to implement authentication measures on the cell phone. Some cell phones can use biometrics, while most still use either a pattern or pin number to gain access.

Wifi is the blood line of the modern cell phone. More people use their cell phone to use the internet than they do to actually make calls anymore. With this comes many risk, and the first is that a lot of the data being sent and received isn’t encrypted. Things such as emails and social media applications usually don’t encrypt for quick use. This makes it easy for data to be captured or eavesdropped on. A way to mitigate this is by using applications that encrypt data or installing an application to encrypt data that is sent or received from the cell phone so even if the data is intercepted it is not readable without decrypting it.

Another very likely threat that cell phone users face is malware. Apps, apps, apps, everyone loves apps. They make life so much simpler, but we also don’t know what is on the app before we download it to the cell phone. A user could download an app and also be downloading malware without even knowing it. The malware could then infect the rest of the system. In order to mitigate this threat you should install security software on your cell phone. Scan applications before downloading them. Also research the app and its developer to see if they are reputable.

These are just three potential threats that may affect cell phones. There are many more and hackers are always making more.