SLASSCOM COE Briefing: you don’t need a nuclear war, just a mobile phone

The future is a mobile future. Some would say we are already in it, others that we are close. Either way one thing is for sure: as we go along this road, security threats are evolving with us. According to Kaspersky’s report on mobile malware evolution, last year alone saw over 10 MILLION mobile malware installations.

This was the topic of the day at the SLASSCOM Mobile CORE Executive Briefing, which happened at Dialog Futureworld on the 8^th of May. The event kicked off, with Mr. Sujit Christy taking the stage to give the keynote presentation.

Sujit began his presentation by talking about the mobility of mobile itself and the phases it’s is adopted in organizations. There are challenges to going mobile which will be encountered during the phases, enormous ones as Sujit told us. Some examples of challenges are: end users, regulatory bodies and of course security.

Following the brief introduction, Sujit moved onto the main topic of the day: mobile security. Sujit began by sharing a few facts about the threats faced by mobile security today. He then moved onto talk about these threats in detail and how they can cause problems without you even knowing they exist.

He then moved onto talk about how powerful and deadly the hackers of today that wage cyber warfare are today. We could tell you all about it but this image Sujit shared with his own caption, “You don’t need a nuclear war. You just need a mobile phone.” tells the tale perfectly:

He then concluded his presentation after talking about security measures that enterprises can adopt in the mobile age, such as meeting the stringent new PCT, ISO27001:2013 standards, having a centralized management system for devices, ensure users can’t bypass controls and last but not least, educating users.

Afterwards a panel discussion was conducted which was moderated by Manju Fernando, CEO of Axienta. The panel consisted of Sujit, Jayatha Fernando the program director/legal advisor from ICTA, Pradeep De Almeida (Group Chief Technology Officer at Dialog), Rohana Palliyaguru from Sri Lanka CERT and John Brennan- the Head of Mobility at Leapset.

The panel discussion built on Sujit’s presentation, giving some real life examples of mobile security coming under attack and focused on how we could prepare ourselves for future threats and identifying challenges that could be encountered. One key such point was the law lagging behind new technologies.

The event concluded with the panel discussion and at the end of the day the lessons we learned were reminders of ones we’ve learned in the past. However, with security being a never ending battle and how enterprises as well as end users tend to take security lightly (refer to the countless PC’s running Windows XP for proof). Events giving reminders like this are especially important.