By Kaylin Slakey
As we all know, mobile adoption has skyrocketed in recent years, as more and more people turn to mobile devices for communication, entertainment, sharing work information, taking pictures and video and even paying for things while on the move. With mobile technology advancing as fast as it is and new apps and functionality being introduced every day, it’s hard to imagine that this trend could be slowing down.
However, a new survey from Juniper Networks shows that as the use of mobile devices and services grows, users are becoming less trusting of their security measures, hindering adoption of mobile technology.
According to the survey, only 15 percent of respondents have a great deal of confidence in the security of their mobile devices and services, while the vast majority – 63 percent – are at a crossroads and simply do not know if they should trust that their mobile experiences are secure.
Moreover, the survey found that all it would take is a single security vulnerability – whether it is real or perceived – for people to change their mobile behaviors or abandon certain mobile services altogether. The majority of respondents said if this were to happen they would stop using critical services like online banking (78 percent), that they would no longer send private communications (57 percent) and they would stop viewing medical (54 percent) or work-related information (52 percent).
While I don’t consider myself to be too stringent with security matters (I never password-protect anything unless it’s mandatory and it’s not too rare for me to forget to lock the door to my apartment), it is apparent to me that some security concerns and vulnerabilities need to be addressed as mobile devices become our primary computing device.
What do you think? Is mobile security-paranoia keeping you from certain mobile activities?
A little bit about me: Interested in the business side of mobile as well as learning about cutting edge capabilities and new apps. I know the second part of that statement begs the question: “then why do you use a BlackBerry?”, but we will save that discussion for another day, another blog post.
