4.

3 Proper Authentication, Encryption and other Security Measures

It has been seen and observed that the users tend to keep more of the personal and

important information in the mobile devices which is being used by them on a regular basis.

More of the sensitive information are stored in the mobile rather than in the personal

computer or laptop because mobile devices are easy to carry and with the development of

technology it can do the task of the transaction and other Internet-related works of the user.

This is the reason it is important for the user to understand or have the assurance that

whoever is having access to the mobile device or its network system must be authentic and

should be an authorized user. In the case of any loss or theft of the device, it should be

ensured that only the right user having proper authorization is tracking the device or helping

the owner to extract the information. Establishing security system that checks for the

authentication is the first solution that can be adopted as a precautionary measure by the user

for its mobile device. For this, the user must understand the importance of authentication as a

primary source of safety rather than neglecting it.

Most of the users fail to understand the crucial fact that in the mobile device two

important things need to be protected- first is the mobile phone itself and second is the SIM

card. Smartphones require authentication at the device level to ensure that the information

stored within the device is safe and secure. The mobile device also requires security at the

SIM card level because of the risk of the loss of information contained within the SIM card.

Research work has been conducted by N.L Clarke and S. M. Furnell in the year 2005

to understand the awareness that the users of the mobile device have regarding the

authentication process. Pin number protection is enabled within the smartphones so as to give

a primary protection to the phones from unauthorized usage but it has been found that nearly

33% of the users do not put any pin protection. Around 30% of the users have expressed that

pin protection is very inconvenient and only a few percentage of users have expressed the
importance of pin protection in the mobile phones. Nearly, 40% of the users do not change

the factory code which can be easily retrieved by the hacker or attacker through the online

sources. 36% of the users make use of the same pin everywhere which increases its

probability to be hacked easily by the attacker and other 26% of the users have been found to

share their pin with others reflecting the lesser propriety given to the pin set by them (Furnell,

2009).

Another safety measure to protect the data is the encryption of sensitive data or

information so that even if any attacker extracts the data, they will not be able to view the

original content of the data or information.