Security vendors fail at mobile security

The Jericho Forum has accused security vendors of failing to meet the demands set by mobile devices.

Speaking at a CISO panel at the Infosecurity Europe 2013 press conference in London,  Jericho Forum member Andrew Yeomans said that the next threat landscape will be caused by vendors that have been slow in meeting the demands to change.

“They have been significantly slower out of the box. They know what is secure and know how to secure Windows, Unix, so the immediate threat is a lack of knowledge of the operating system and best practice, and what they had in the past is no longer necessary.”

He said that by letting people buy their own devices companies "put admin and control on top of them".

Network Rail IM security head Peter Gibbons said: “This has crept up on everyone and it feels like vendors have missed it, and big suppliers in mobile device management (MDM) are not traditional technology companies, and now the leaders have missed a trick.

“This has been tipped on its head with the traditional method of releasing into the enterprise, as they usually understand your needs to meet the requirements with the user and that is how you get their technology. Now it is the other way round.”

He said many traditional security vendors have launched mobile-related products, but this has happened so quickly that there is no decent product.

“I get 10-15 calls from vendors who say that they can show me a product, but mobile vendors have broken into it,” he said.

Tracy Andrew, information security and compliance officer at Field Fisher Waterhouse, said that it is so fast and dynamic, that the bigger players cannot cover all the bases and that the smaller vendors can react quicker but often do not have the right solution to bring to market as it is not ready.

Nigel Stanley, analyst at Bloor, said: “With the work I have done, the smaller companies are more agile than the bigger companies and they talk about mobile solutions. If I were one of the bigger companies I would be worried as they talk anti-virus, when what we want is proper mobile device management.”

This article originally appeared at scmagazineuk.com