ICSA Labs, an independent division of Verizon has provided third-party testing and certification of security products since 1989. They suggest a series of security tips for smartphone, tablet, or app user’s Help Net Security reports.
Only buy apps from recognized app stores
Apps from unofficial third-party stores and applications downloaded from peer-to-peer sites are much more likely to contain malware than apps sanctioned by official vendor stores such as the Android App Market or Apple App Store.
Think twice about accepting permissions
Most applications, legitimate as well as malicious ones, need users to accept several “permissions” before the apps are installed. Check carefully to be sure that the app comes from a legitimate source. I wrote about mobile phones leaking data previously.
Monitor bills for irregular charges.
If attackers gain access to personal information stored on the mobile device, they can quickly rack up charges by sending “silent” text messages to high-priced call services. For example, if the Google (GOOG) AndroidTrojanGGTracker is inadvertently installed on a device, it can sign up users, without their knowledge, for premium text messaging services.
Employ security policies to protect employer-issued devices
Employers should enforce password-based access and require voice mail codes so that only authorized users can get access to data on employer-issued devices.
Be mindful of more personal devices at work
Companies must have security systems and policies in place to safeguard their business environment and prevent access to company networks from employees’ personal devices. I wrote about BYOThere.
Remember that a tablet is a tiny PCs
Many security threats that apply to traditional computers also apply to mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, and consumers should take necessary measures to protect themselves. One way to do this is to install anti-malware software on mobile devices and enable VPN functionality.
Protect your tablet, smartphone, and voicemail PIN
If your mobile phone does not have a password, add one that is at least six digits. Try to choose a unique password that is not already used across other systems and accounts. Do not use repeating digits in passwords or voice mail pins. Remember that your provider will never request your voice mail pin, so do not be tempted to give it to anyone who requests it.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
A couple of recent articles about greener alternative energy sources for tech caught my eye as I sat in my Bach Seat. First, TES NewEnergy, based in Osaka Japan has come up with a new way to charge your mobile phone by heating a pot of water over a campfire according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
The Hatsuden-Nabethermo-electric cookpot turns heat from boiling water into electricity The pot features strips of ceramic thermoelectric material that generate electricity through temperature differentials between 550 degrees Celsius at the bottom of the pot and the water boiling inside at 100 degrees. The pot feeds the electricity via a USB port into digital devices such as Apple (AAPL) iPhones, iPods, and Garmin (GRMN) GPS‘s.
Chief executive Kazuhiro Fujita said the invention was inspired by Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami, “When I saw the TV footage of the quake victims making a fire to keep themselves warm, I came up with the idea of helping them to charge their mobile phones at the same time,” Mr. Fujita said.
“Unlike a solar power generator, our pot can be used regardless of the time of day and weather while its small size allows people to easily carry it in a bag in case of evacuation,” said director and co-developer Ryoji Funahashi.
The company says the device takes three to five hours to charge an iPhone and can heat up your lunch at the same time.
rb- The thermo-electric cookpot sells for 24,150 yen ($305) which seems sort of expensive to charge an iPhone when the towers are also put of power and down. TES NewEnergy also plans to market it later in developing countries with unreliable power grids. Their best bet is probably REI for all the extreme suburbanites.
Aussie greener alternative energy idea
According to PCAuthority.com Aussie scientists have developed a way to power electronics by harnessing the energy of the keyboard. Using piezoelectrics, which converts pressure into an electric current, and a thin-film technology found in microchips, researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne believe laptops could become self-powered just by their user’s typing.
The new energy source needs more work before it’s practical for low-cost laptop integration, but Dr. Mandu Bhaskaran, the co-author of the research, believes the development is a step in the right direction. “With the drive for alternative energy solutions, we need to find more efficient ways to power microchips,” said Bhaskaran.
TechEye correctly identifies the biggest challenge to this alternative energy source will be to get the power demands of computer chips down to be able to use the technology. Despite the best efforts of chipmakers like Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD), the power drain for chips is still too high for this sort of technology.
rb- Maybe the Aussies want to bring back WordPerfect and DOS so you have to type all the time otherwise your laptop will run out of power. Image the rush to buy these devices as the green police get credits for taking more computers off the grid.
TV as an alternative energy source
Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a self-powered, wireless paper-based device that runs on scavenged ambient energy from the environment. The GATech alternative energy system collects electromagnetic energy transmitted by television transmitters, mobile phone networks, and satellite communications systems. Manos Tentzeris, a professor in the GATech School of Electrical and Computer EngineeringtoldGizmag the new technology can be used to power small electronic devices such as networks of wireless sensors, microprocessors, and communications chips.
The GATech team has been able to build the system by combining sensors, antennas, and energy scavenging capabilities on paper by using inkjet printing technology According to the article, the energy scavenging technology can take advantage of frequencies from FM radio to radar. So far the team has been able to generate hundreds of milliwatts by harnessing the energy from TV bands. Gizmag reports that multi-band systems would generate over one milliwatt, which is enough to run small electronic devices, including microprocessors. The Professor explains that multi-band systems can exploit a range of electromagnetic bands to capture more energy.
The Gizmag article says the system works. The researchers have successfully operated a temperature sensor using electromagnetic energy captured from a television station more than half a kilometer away. They are now preparing another demonstration where a microprocessor-based microcontroller would be activated by holding it in the air.
The researchers say the technology could be used with other electricity-generating technologies like solar. Scavenged energy could help a solar element charge a battery during the day while at night, scavenged energy would continue to charge the battery.
The Georgia Tech team believes that self-powered, wireless paper-based sensors will soon be widely available at a very low cost. Gizmag says the autonomous, inexpensive sensors would be attractive for a range of applications, such as chemical, biological, heat and stress sensing, RFID and monitoring for the military, manufacturing, shipping, communications, and smart grid applications.
rb-
I wrote about something similar here. It is important to realize that this new alternative energy source has so far been wasted.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
The market research firm iSuppli predicts that 73.4% of Earth’s population now owns a mobile phone. Thanks to demand in the emerging economies, analysts at iSuppli are predicting that there are now 5 billion mobile subscriptions. That works out to nearly 3 out of every 4 people on this planet will own a mobile phone.
Dr. Jagdish Rebello, iSuppli senior director, and principal wireless analyst believes that mobile phones are driving the tech industry. Rebello says “… the proliferation of wireless communications stands out as one of the most significant phenomena in the history of technology.” He says that wireless communication is now. “ … a basic staple like food, clothing, and shelter.”
“Wireless now represents the biggest stage that any technology market has ever played on, offering unlimited opportunities for members of the mobile communications supply chain,” Rebello said in a press release. “Because of the prevalence of mobile communications, the focus of the global technology supply chain has shifted away from the slower-growing computer market toward fast-expanding wireless-oriented platforms he says, ”The vast size of the installed base means wireless delivers greater opportunities for content and service developers to reach a large part of the population. Furthermore, the evolution of mobile handsets into smartphones is leading to the deployment of more value-added services, software, and components.”
Wireless subscriptions vary widely by region
iSuppli says wireless subscriptions vary widely by region. At the low-end is the combined Africa and Middle East region at 50% to 157.6% in Western Europe. The global installed base of wireless devices will amount to 4.9 billion at the end of 2010. The remaining subscribers will be accounted for by added Subscriber Identification (SIM) modules used in mobile handsets and services to Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications systems. IntoMobile points out that 47.6 million subscriptions were added per month since December 2008 to reach current levels.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
A survey released by Finland based mobile phone maker Nokia has that one of the main reasons why so few people recycle their mobile phones. Most people simply don’t know that it is possible to recycle mobile phones. Even if they were aware that a mobile could be recycled, did not know how to go about doing this.
Two thirds said they did not know how to recycle an unwanted mobile device
A majority (71%) were unaware of where to recycle an unwanted mobile device.
Globally, half of those surveyed didn’t know phones could be recycled, with awareness lowest in India at 17% and Indonesia at 29%, and highest in the UK at 80% and 66% in Finland and Sweden.
Nokia also found some other interesting factoids about our mobile phones recycling habits.
On average consumers have owned around five phones.
Only 3% of people recycle their mobile phones.
Three out of every four people indicated that they don’t even think about recycling their devices
Nearly half of the respondents were unaware that it is even possible to recycle their mobile phones.
The majority of retired phones, 44%, are kept at homes never used again.
One quarter of users are passing on their old phones to friends or family
Sixteen percent of people are selling their used devices particularly in emerging markets.
Remarkably only 4%, of retired mobile devices are being thrown into landfill.
Markus Terho, Director of Environmental Affairs, Markets, at Nokia said, “If each of the three billion people globally owning mobiles brought back just one unused device we could save 240,000 tons of raw materials and reduce greenhouse gases to the same effect as taking 4 million cars off the road.”
Up to 80% of any Nokia device is recyclable and precious materials within it can be reused to help make new products. Mr. Terho said, “Using the best recycling technology nothing is wasted. Between 65 – 80 per cent of a Nokia device can be recycled. Plastics that can’t be recycled are burnt to provide energy for the recycling process, and other materials are ground up into chips and used as construction materials or for building roads. In this way nothing has to go to landfill.”
Nokia has collection points for unwanted mobile devices in 85 countries around the world, the largest voluntary scheme in the mobile industry. People can drop off their old devices at Nokia stores and almost 5,000 Nokia Care Centers. To find their nearest take back point people can visit ecoATM.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
ICSA Labs, an independent division of Verizon has provided third-party testing and certification of security products since 1989. They suggest a series of security tips for smartphone, tablet, or app user’s Help Net Security reports.
Apps from unofficial third-party stores and applications downloaded from peer-to-peer sites are much more likely to contain malware than apps sanctioned by official vendor stores such as the Android App Market or Apple App Store.
If attackers gain access to personal information stored on the mobile device, they can quickly rack up charges by sending “silent” text messages to high-priced call services. For example, if the Google (GOOG) Android Trojan GGTracker is inadvertently installed on a device, it can sign up users, without their knowledge, for premium text messaging services.
Companies must have security systems and policies in place to safeguard their business environment and prevent access to company networks from employees’ personal devices. I wrote about BYOT here.
If your mobile phone does not have a password, add one that is at least six digits. Try to choose a unique password that is not already used across other systems and accounts. Do not use repeating digits in passwords or voice mail pins. Remember that your provider will never request your voice mail pin, so do not be tempted to give it to anyone who requests it.
A couple of recent articles about greener alternative energy sources for tech caught my eye as I sat in my 
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