Mobile devices are the new PC(Personal Computer) Why? Let us think about it.A lot of people have mobile devices compared to owning a PC.
According to statistics, there are 7.7 billion people in the world and it is estimated that more than 5 billion people have mobile devices and half of this are smart phones(Pew research center).
Mobile devices are getting smarter by the day.A lot of people mange their social,financial and professional life using their mobile devices
Mobile devices are vulnerable just like our PC’s but why do we take the security of our PC’s more serious than our mobiles?
Because hackers aren’t targeting out mobiles yet? or because we haven’t been hit by attacks via our mobile yet?
Malicious software(Malwares) popularly known as virus are ways to cause harm to our mobile devices just like our PC’s .
Malwares are software designed intentionally to cause damage to our devices or its’s user. It could be in form of a virus, spyware, ransomware and some others.
A quick note: I might use “Virus” and “malware” interchangeably .I understand that they are not the same thing but to the end user, bad things happening to your device is caused by a virus
DOES MOBILE DEVICE NEEDS AN ANTIVIRUS(ANTI MALWARE)?
Twitter Poll
I ran a poll on twitter that sparked a lot of different opinion as to if antivirus is needed on a mobile device .
From my result, a lot of people do not use antivirus on their mobile device.Now the millionaire question is WHY?
There are different reasons for this
AbdulAziz who is an independent cybersecurity researcher agrees that android viruses exist but we shouldn’t worry too much about them.“
“In almost all cases, Android phones and tablets do not need antivirus installed. Android viruses are by no means as prevalent as media outlets may have you believe, and your device is much more at risk of theft than it is a virus. But it is true: Android viruses do exist”
The most interesting view was @iamCharlesChege’s who is a UX and system administrator. He believes that because of the internal system designs of mobile operating system, antivirus cannot work on mobiles.“
Antiviruses don’t work on android or iOS because of the internal designs of these mobile operating systems. All apps are jailed in their environment meaning that they cannot access other apps on the phone. So that means antiviruses can’t quarantine malware because they can’t“
A handful of people think mobile antivirus are just junks and are there to eat up spaces on the mobile. Not to forget the ios users, they feel they are very secured hence they do not need any antivirus to protect against this malicious software.
Mobile devices are good targets for data theft and other digital harms due to the sheer rate at which the device is growing. Hence, there are a lot of malicious software designed (especially for android device).With the increase of malicious software for android, the android play store Google play store has a service known as the “Google play protect“. This feature is a built in malware protection for android.
Google launched this service in May 2017,the functions includes
- It automatically scans your device and makes sure you have the latest in mobile security, so you can rest easy.
- It checks your device for potentially harmful applications from other sources. These harmful applications are sometimes called malware.
- It warns you about any detected potentially harmful applications found, and removes known harmful app from your device.
- It warns you about detected apps that violate our Unwanted Software Policy by hiding or misrepresenting important information.
Awwal a cybersecurity Analyst thinks we need an antivirus if you use third party applications.
“if you use third party application, you definitely need an antivirus”
What do you think? Share your thoughts with us @cybersecfill