4 Ways to Secure your Smartphone!!

How secure we want our house to be so we introduce a smart security system and surveillance cameras, in the similar way we need to uphold our data and passwords to be secure else anonymous people can access our sensitive information.

“Information Security is the process of protecting the intellectual property of the individuals.”

Information Security is defined as “protecting information and information systems from unauthorized access”, which means we need to protect our data from anonymous people who want to misuse it. In a general sense, security means protecting our assets. This means protecting our data from attackers invading our networks. Ultimately, our challenge is to protect critical information from cyber threat.

With the growth of the internet, the dependence on computers has increased exponentially.

Smartphones are one of the most empowering technologies to which most of the people in the world access where it is usually connected to some network or other.

Smartphone Security:

• Smartphones are often locked to a specific mobile network operator. This means specific smartphones will work only with company’s SIM Card. Sometimes mobile network operators often customize the OS and install additional software on locked mobiles. They may disable some functionalities. This could leave you with apps on your mobile that you can’t uninstall or prevent from accessing your information ,including your contacts and storage.
• Remember to keep all of your apps up-to-date and to uninstall apps that you no longer use. App developers sometimes sell their apps to other people. A new owner could alter an app that you have already installed and push a malicious update.
• On Android devices, each application must ask your permission before it will be permitted to do certain things. You should pay close attention to what permissions are requested. If they do not make sense for the app in question, have a look at the reasons provided and consider declining and uninstalling the app. If you are testing out a “news reader” app, for example, and it asks for permission to send your contacts over a mobile data connection to a third party, you should be suspicious. Some app developers collect lists of contacts and sell them or use them for marketing.
• Sometimes mobile phone networks are insecure as your service provider knows and keeps a record of your phone’s location whenever it is powered on.

Man-In-Middle Attack in Wi-fi Devices:

Performing Man-In-Middle Attack in a wireless network is much easier, when compared to wired networks. As the transmissions from an access point is broadcasted, it is easy for an unauthorized user to collect the traffic sent by other wireless clients. Also the third party user can manipulate the data sent to the legitimate users which results in breaking the users privacy.

So In order to avoid these kinds of attacks, Strong encryption should be used for transmitting the data between wireless clients and access points by using hashing techniques.

Sophisticated threats like Man-in-the-Middle attacks intercept online transactions by reading payment data from the Internet browser while the user is typing his credit card or bank account details. Phishing attacks are used to steal users login details and personal data, making e-wallet accounts susceptible to fraud.

E-Wallet safety:

• Download and use anti-malware protection for the mobile phone or tablet device.
• Keep the Banking App software up to date: Using the latest version of software allows receiving important stability and security fixes timely.
• Use security software: Applications for detecting and removing threats, including firewalls, virus and malware detection and intrusion-detection systems, mobile security solutions should be installed and activated.
• Reputed applications should only be downloaded onto the smart phone from the market after looking at the developer’s name, reviews and star ratings and checking the permissions that the application requests and ensuring that the requests match the features provided by that application.

So, by some security measures, we can be secure, instead of being a victim to cyber theft.