Your wallet is something you never want to lose. However, many people are now using mobile wallet applications for making purchases and money transactions. Opposed to your physical wallet, it is hard to control the security of your mobile wallet. Security breaches happen unexpectedly and quietly. A security attack to your mobile wallet can go unnoticed for quite some time.
According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek who refers to Mobile Payments as the new frontier for criminals:
“Nearly 70 percent of mobile phones aren’t password-protected, according to Sophos, a mobile security vendor. Parents allow children to play with their phones without considering that they may download some bit of malware, says Shirley Inscoe, a senior analyst at Aite Group: ‘They don’t realize the risk they may entail given the data stored on their mobile device.’
Criminals can access a mobile wallet by stealing the handset or by tricking its owner into downloading a piece of malicious code. Malware attacks on U.S. smartphones have risen 18 percent since 2011 and now add up to 15.3 percent of the world total, says mobile security vendor NQ Mobile…
…Banks and mobile-payment providers are scrambling to build—or buy—better defenses.”
15.3% of the world – that number shows that attacks are growing rapidly. Mobile payment apps collect the most private personal data, therefore they need to be security tested inside and out. However, they can’t just be tested in the lab, because it’s real world situations that hackers will try to work around. White hat security experts that can find and simulate risks are a developers best option for identifying security threats. Catching any issues before the app’s users do is the ultimate goal.
But how long do you think it will be until the average user ditches there wallet and uses there phone as a primary payment method?
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