Survey Shows Widespread Concern About Mobile Device Security

Two-thirds of mobile phone owners are concerned about the security of their devices, concludes a study commissioned by device security vendor, Cloudmark. The survey, which polled 1,812 US adults who own mobile devices, shows that security concerns are preventing many users from adopting new mobile services for financial transactions and shopping. Meanwhile, mobile spam was also shown to be impacting a significant portion of mobile device owners.

Although new applications and services are rapidly emerging for mobile devices, survey results showed that users' perception of security is proving to be a significant barrier to their adoption, especially for mobile financial transactions.

Noteworthy findings include:

• 65 percent of all mobile device owners expressed concerns about the security of their device.
• Nearly half (46%) of these concerned device owners said that their worries about security prevented them from conducting activities on their mobile device.
• Of the activities mobile device owners said they were prevented from doing because of their concerns, financial transactions such as paying bills (73%), conducting banking activities (71%) and shopping (56%) were named most often.
• 79 percent of mobile device owners said that they have never sent or received confidential information of any kind through their device, which may further illustrate their lack of confidence in security.

The report also says that mobile operators also have a vested interest in supporting these offerings as an additional revenue stream. However, as convenient as these offerings are, the data from this study suggests that users may require additional assurance that mobile transactions can be conducted securely before they are willing to fully leverage these services.

Mobile device owners also indicated that mobile spam has established a highly visible presence on networks, with 44 percent of owners indicating that they have received spam on their mobile device.

"The prevalence of spam will only continue to rise as financial gain for spammers continues to increase," said Jamie de Guerre, CTO of Cloudmark. "For new services to succeed, it will be imperative for mobile operators to assure their customers of a secure environment for transactions, and to ensure that mobile spam does not impact the delivery of legitimate messages."

The study was carried out by Harris Interactive.

The full report (pdf file) can be downloaded from the Cloudmark website.

Posted to the site on 23rd June 2009