.The Wall Street Journal has been running an excellent series of articles on the shadowy areas of data mining - putting together little snips of data to gain a very sharp picture of your personal information. Now www.s21sec.com has discovered a new twist. Banking customers receive seemingly harmless text messages with links that when clicked, installed malware on their smartphones. Why? The malware was able to intercept codes sent by banks to smartphones to 'authenticate' transactions. How could this be harmful?

A "man in the middle" attack could rest. Lets say you are checking your balance, or transferring $200 from savings to checking. When you log on to your favorite banking app, it authenticates you. The malware code, sitting in the background on your phone, 'borrows' the auth code and transfers a much larger sum to a different account or payee entirely.  Before you even know something is wrong, the funds have been re-transferred umpty times and are now untracable and gone.

The FBI announced in October that organized crime had used one variation of this the Zeus Botnet, to steal over $70 million from unsuspecting banking clients. While the amount stolen via fixed desktop PCs vs. mobile devices wasn't made public, the chances are good that you have no anti-virus software on your smart phone at all. Right?

Mobile device AV is an emerging industry ... and emerging software is usually not the most stable, comprehensive, or trust worthy ... especially when you need it to guard the crown jewels of your family or business.

Bottom line -  We recommend sacrificing convenience in favor of safety, and NOT installing banking (or stock trading) apps on your mobile smart devices at present.

Wonder what  a comprehensive security audit of your enterprise - from network to laptops to mobile - would turn up? We're happy to help - just ask! 

Allworx can now can support up to 250 users at a single site!
The Allworx 48x has all the features of the smaller 6x and 24x, and is priced even more attractively than the 24x at user counts above 30. 

With a lifecycle cost (total cost of ownership) of about 60% of a similar ShoreTel or Cisco system, why we call Allworx the "ShoreTel Killer".

If you're ready for full IP telephony - we'll be glad to do a full live demonstration in your office, and let you see how 'telephony without walls' can truly knit together a mobile workforce and multiple offices into a single system which is seamless for your customers and staff.

Call 415 746-1801 or email us to learn more!