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Feb. 14, 2007

Overall, the number of mobile security incidents went up by a staggering 500 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to a new security report released by McAfee.

On average, wireless operators have experienced important customer satisfaction problems as a direct result from these security breaches.

According to McAfee's new study, malware attacks are on the rise globally, and wireless operators are spending more and more money to recover from the security breaches.

Almost fifty percent of mobile operators admitted to seeing attacks in the last three months and the number of operators spending more than $200,000 on mobile security devices has more than doubled.

The costliest effect of the attacks was not on operators, but on overall customer satisfaction and user experience.

On average, 29 percent of mobile operators said that subscriber satisfaction suffered more than anything else, even revenue.

This played on about 80 percent of mobile operators’ fears that security breaches would lead to negative impacts on their brand or credibility. Also, decreased network performance ranked as the second most serious problem.

However, it's important to note that less than 30 percent of mobile operators that consider device and application-level security important actually install such protection devices.

Still, 85 percent of respondents plan to significantly boost their mobile security budgets.

"In light of all this, such research clearly demonstrates that mobile security is moving quickly up the industry agenda, with the number of malware incidents rising rapidly.

Victor Kouznetsov, senior v.p. of McAfee Mobile Security says that "industry-wide, more time and more budgets are being dedicated to resolving mobile security issues."

"As mobile data use and functionality proliferates and wireless operators around the world are transforming their businesses from airtime revenue models to transaction-based and content-centric businesses, security is becoming an essential enabler for the success of new revenue-generating services," added Kouznetsov.

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Source: Wireless Week