By Graham K. Rogers

In a warning about security on smartphones, Dionisio Zumerle (principle research analyst at Gartner) says that many weaknesses are due to poor configuration. A report in Help-Net Security notes particularly that he says, "The most obvious platform compromises of this nature are 'jailbreaking' on iOS or 'rooting' on Android devices".

Zumerle is also reported as predicting that 75 percent of mobile security breaches by 2017 will be the result of mobile application misconfiguration. Cloud services that use apps may be a particular risk here.

The Help-Net Security article contains a number of suggestions concerning enterprise use, including basic compliance rules, effective passwords, specifying platforms and operating systems, no jailbreaking and only authorised apps.

More details are available in the article, "Misconfiguration to blame for most mobile security breaches".

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life.