Recently, a news report titled “466 problematic apps released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in recent years” has attracted the attention of netizens. The report pointed out that a virus called “DowginCW” exists in multiple popular games in the form of plugins, secretly controlling at least 100000 mobile devices in China. With the fermentation of this news, the age-old topic of mobile phone safety has once again attracted people’s attention.
With the rapid development of mobile Internet and the popularity of smart phones in recent years, many mobile payment tools have also been born, such as WeChat, Alipay and other commonly used payment software, which have become the first choice for people to pay for travel consumption. It is also the birth of these mobile payment tools that has made protecting mobile phone security increasingly important.
The 2016-2017 quarterly inspection report on the mobile phone security market released by iMedia Consulting shows that in 2016, the mobile phone security issues that users were concerned about were divided into many types. Among them, 73.3% of users were concerned about the security of mobile payment assets, 64.8% were concerned about personal privacy breaches, and there were also common mobile phone security issues such as harassing phone calls, public WiFi security, and spam messages. The report also shows that users’ overall awareness of mobile phone security is not high, and mobile phone security issues are still prominent.
In fact, the situation of mobile phone security issues has remained severe since the outbreak, especially with the trend of mobile phones gradually replacing PCs in recent years, making it a high-risk area for various viruses and Trojans. The news reports about the outbreak of new mobile phone viruses are wave after wave, and mobile phone security issues continue to emerge, posing a threat to users’ mobile phone security. As for the control of mobile phone security issues, although many security guards have become increasingly sophisticated in their protective measures, virus creators have also become more sophisticated in their methods. Various security risks that are difficult to prevent have always existed in mobile phones.
In addition, the report also shows that as of the fourth quarter of 2016, the number of domestic mobile phone security users was 539 million, and by the third quarter of 2017, this number had reached 559 million, with a growth rate of 1.27%. This indicates that the number of domestic mobile security users has entered a phase of slowing growth in the past two years, and the dividend of user growth is diminishing.
Therefore, in the mobile phone security market where security issues remain severe and user growth slows down, the overall development in the later stage will focus on tapping into the value of existing users. In the process of tapping into the value of existing users, the mobile phone security market has gradually been divided into two camps: one is the professional third-party mobile phone security guard camp, and the other is the security phone that has emerged in the past two years. Both sides jointly form the security defense line of the mobile phone security market, but they still have some shortcomings.
Third party mobile phone security guard: security nature deteriorates, protection function is not thorough
The third-party mobile security software on the market not only has specialized functions of virus scanning and monitoring in mobile security protection, but also has become a must-have for many mobile phone users to install mobile applications due to its rich derived functions. As is well known, the functions of these mobile security software mainly include virus scanning, traffic monitoring, intercepting harassing calls, blocking advertisements and spam messages, and cleaning mobile phone memory. In the early stages of the development of smartphones with generally low mobile phone memory and traffic, mobile security guards were highly favored by smartphone users.
However, with the increasing maturity of mobile phone software and hardware technology, the protection performance of mobile phones themselves is also getting better, so the virus monitoring function of mobile phone security guards seems to be less valued. In addition, during the stage of slowing down user growth, there are still some problems in the development of mobile security software.
Firstly, there are too many permissions that need to be opened, and the security nature has deteriorated somewhat. As a software specifically designed to protect mobile phone security, its functions are constantly being optimized and improved. However, in the process of becoming increasingly rich and complete, these software designed to protect mobile phone security have undergone subtle changes in their security nature. These changes manifest as the need for users to open up many phone permissions before helping them achieve a certain function, which may inadvertently lead to the insecurity of the phone.
Tencent Mobile Manager needs to enable self activation permissions to protect the security of the phone in real-time, as well as open contact and SMS permissions to effectively monitor certain security options on the phone; For example, 360 Security Guard also requires users to open self activation permissions, otherwise it will cause many basic functions to be unable to be used. In addition, it is necessary to open permissions such as SMS and reading call records, otherwise it will affect the use of traffic monitoring and fraud interception functions. From this perspective, these mobile security guards themselves are designed to protect the security of mobile phones, but in the end, due to obtaining too many permissions, their security nature seems to have deteriorated somewhat.
Secondly, the security protection function is not thorough enough and may only serve as a safety assistance. As the name suggests, the function of mobile security software is to protect the security of the phone, and then expand to other derivative functions. However, some mobile security software’s security protection functions seem to be less “professional”, and when performing mobile antivirus operations, it is necessary to cooperate with another antivirus software to fully exert its antivirus effect.
Although Kingsoft Mobile Security, a subsidiary of Kingsoft, has regular options such as harassment interception and software scanning in its mobile protection functions, it needs to cooperate with its Kingsoft Mobile Antivirus to maximize its antivirus effectiveness during mobile antivirus operations. From this perspective, it seems that Kingsoft Mobile Guard only plays an auxiliary role in security monitoring, and the real security guard is actually Kingsoft Mobile Antivirus. In this way, in order to achieve the goal of thorough antivirus, mobile phone users need to install two software with similar functions. This not only wastes user memory, but also makes users feel rebellious and turn to other security software.
In addition, some mobile security software also has issues such as fast power consumption and “stealing” data, and some may cause phone lag due to excessive memory.
Overall, third-party mobile security software has attracted a lot of attention from users in the mobile security market due to their professionalism. However, due to technological limitations, there are still many functions that urgently need to be optimized and improved.
Targeting business security with a secure mobile phone: entering the market is not yet a necessity, internal skills still need to be cultivated
In order to meet the high security needs of some users, many mobile phone distributor and wholesaler have released security phones with higher security performance compared to ordinary smartphones, which are more professional in security protection performance.
For example, the security phone ZTE V870 aimed at the government market, the Gionee M7 aimed at the business market, as well as the low profile wide range smartphones and Veb phones aimed at the business community.
Since last year, secure phones have been a hot topic in the mobile security market, and with the advantages of enterprises themselves, some secure phone brands have gradually become well-known. However, due to objective factors such as the timeliness of initial market entry, the concept of secure mobile phones has not been fully popularized in the market, and its popularity is generally low.
In addition, for some ordinary mobile phone users, secure phones are not a rigid requirement in the mobile phone category, so it is understandable that they are generally not well known. After all, for the vast majority of users, the high security of their mobile phones cannot be a reason to purchase one. If they think their phones are not secure enough, they can at least rely on third-party mobile security software. As these security phone brands are involved in, security phones are currently only suitable for people in the government and business markets.
Therefore, overall, due to the relatively young market experience and narrow audience range, it will take some time for secure phones to fully enter the market.
Mobile phone security still has a long way to go, entering the enterprise market may become a new incremental way
Overall, as mobile phones gradually become a highly sticky tool in people’s lives, the mobile end has also become a vulnerable area to various virus attacks. The position of the mobile security market is still improving, and the industry still has great development space.
As mentioned earlier, the domestic mobile security market has entered a stage of slowing growth, so the overall development may move towards value mining of existing users in the future. However, it is evident that the built-in security manager protection performance of smartphones is also improving, and its functions are similar to those of third-party security software. At the same time, as WiFi spreads throughout every corner of life and mobile phone memory increases, traffic monitoring becomes less important to people, and the function of clearing memory is no longer favored. Therefore, for enterprises that provide third-party security software, it seems that mining the value of existing users is not so simple.
However, with the shift of corporate office to mobile devices, the attention of business people to mobile phone security is also constantly increasing. For some business professionals, enterprise data and various secrets play a crucial role, and are also high-risk areas for virus attacks. If the mobile security market can seize this trend, improve the security protection performance of enterprise offices in a targeted manner, promote the development of the mobile office security market, bring good news to the mobile office population, and further achieve the goal of tapping into the value of existing users.
Meanwhile, with the development of artificial intelligence technology, applying it to mobile phone security protection has become a new direction for the mobile phone security market. With the support of artificial intelligence technology, achieving comprehensive coverage of mobile phone users’ life scenarios can provide more intelligent security protection operations for mobile phone users.
Overall, various mobile phone viruses have died in batches in rounds of suppression, but at the same time, new viruses have swept in, and mobile phone security issues have been lingering in people’s lives. In the future mobile phone security market, if the phone itself has a very high security system and users do not need to worry about security issues, then there is no such thing as third-party mobile phone security guards. However, completely eliminating viruses that threaten mobile phone security is not that simple, so the battle for mobile phone security is still a protracted one.
November 11, 2021
