Why 2012 Is The Year Of Mobile VPN?

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Slimmer bodies, faster Internet connections, and better network coverage makes use of the latest smartphones and mobile devices all the more appealing to the public—AND TO HACKERS.

In 2011, smartphone users were introduced to mind-blowing features like Siri. However, they were also introduced to the major headache of mobile malware; and according to the following security experts, it will definitely continue to be a cause for concern in 2012.

“In the past, malware developers have concentrated on over 1 billion PCs in the world. However, as the number of mobile users has skyrocketed, smartphones have become an attractive target for malware producers. There are three motivations for malicious activity—fame, fortune and politics. We will see maturation in all areas, but we expect fortune-seekers to really come into their own in 2012.” – Kevin Mahaffey, Lookout Mobile Security’s chief technology officer.

“I know it’s a tad early for New Year predictions, but I’m going to beat the rush and make mine now: 2012 will be the year of mobile malware. That’s an easy prediction to make, because if you look at the numbers, 2011 was really the year of mobile malware, but only a handful of people have been paying close attention. Next year, you won’t be able to avoid hearing about it, and if you carry anything remotely ‘smart’ in your pocket—and you don’t carry adequate ‘protection’, as we used to say in high school—you may become a victim of it.” – Dan Tynan, writer at ITWorld.

“The mobile device, now the dominant technological tool in American enterprise, will become more dominant in 2012 and beyond. But it is not very secure, which puts users and the enterprises that employ them at greater risk. The combination of relative defenselessness and ubiquity means mobile devices will be an increasingly tempting target for attacks ranging from spyware to rogue applications. IBM’s IT security research team, X-Force, predicts 33 software exploits targeting mobile devices in 2012. That may sound small, but it is double the number released in the previous 12 months.” Taylor Armerding, writer at PC World.

What do you think? Will mobile malware be one of the biggest security threats next year?

Why Cloud VPN?

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Often managers and entrepreneurs associate cloud VPN with individual use. It is believed that enterprises use their own VPNs, administered by their internal IT personnel. They believe it is more secure.

It’s not. Moreover, cloud VPN offers a better value.

We define cloud VPNs as securely connecting from any location to resources (data and applications) that are provisioned in central data sites for the purpose of highly-available and reliable access. A cloud VPN must also offer specific characteristics which address the requirements for secure remote access from any device, over any type of network and from any location.

Ivacy provides for absolutely secure and anonymous VPN connection for any mobile device, such as iPhones, iPads, Android tablets and smartphones.

Companies that want their mobile employees to securely access the company network via the Internet have several options available to them: remote access out of the cloud, virtual private network as a service (VPNaaS) and managed security service provider (MSSP). Due to economic reasons, companies and individuals choose to outsource the operation of their VPNs to cloud, hosting or managed service providers.

The benefits for enterprises include the following:

no investment in hardware, software and in-house experts
a fast realization of a remote access VPN project
low monthly expenses
If the cloud VPN is software-based, it’s able to be virtualized and offers high scalability. Ideally, the cloud VPN solution would support multi-tenancy, be available for all major operating systems and device platforms and have a central management component

Web privacy tools to warn of internet tracking cookies

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Internet users will receive a warning if sites do not respect their privacy thanks to new tools being developed by the web’s standards setting body.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) wants to help users control how their personal data is managed.
It is designing controls to shield personal data and reveal when sites do not honour privacy requests.
The W3C now wants users, browser makers and businesses to help finish and implement the specifications.
“Users have the feeling they are being being tracked and some users have privacy concerns and would like to solve them,” said Dr Matthias Schunter from IBM who chairs the W3C group drawing up the Do Not Track technologies.

Co-ordination
The working group is defining software specifications that will:
- let browser settings tell websites to do less tracking
- let websites acknowledge privacy requests
- define best practices for sites so they can comply with different privacy needs

Dr Schunter said the specifications aim to end the current situation in which different browser makers adopt incompatible Do Not Track systems.
“Currently websites need to implement all these different protocols,” he said. “There’s no standard way to respect privacy preferences.”
“We want to standardise all these protocols so they talk the same language and then tell websites what to do with them,” said Dr Schunter.
The tools resulting from the W3C work would aim to be “privacy friendly” and surrender as little information as possible, he added.
For instance, he said, a site could log a user’s language preference by noting their name and native tongue and store that in a cookie – little text files sites use to record information about regular visitors.
A more privacy-friendly way, said Dr Schunter, would have browser software note that its owner prefers a particular language without surrendering any identifying information.
Users could be warned about sites that do not do a good job of respecting requests to keep information private.
While the W3C cannot insist that sites and software vendors follow its lead, said Dr Schunter, it was more than likely that they would adopt the technologies.
The finished technologies are expected to be implemented by browser makers first in mid-2012 with websites following soon after as they get to grips with the best practices.
More than 15 firms and organisations are involved in the Do Not Track work including Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Stanford University.

Original published here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15723407

Ivacy Supports Discussions @London Conference on Cyberspace

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Ivacy experts carefully followed discussions at London Conference on Cyberspace to catch the trend of concern.

It is obvious though, that VPN is a double-sided sword, which helps, on one hand, obtain privacy and data security to a wide number of clients (which is clearly the case with Ivacy), but on the other hand provides a privacy tool to cyber criminals.

We believe that recent initiative by a number of VPN providers to exchange data on suspected cyber criminal activity is a good start. Thus we will reduce the number of attempts to use our service as a privacy tool to credit card fraud criminals, as an instance.