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Most mobile apps source of information theft, says Palak

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Around 75 per cent of mobile apps available in the market have very poor security, hackers can easily breach those and obtain confidential information.

Terming a large number of available mobile apps as potential “sources of information hacking”, state minister for information technology and communication (ICT), Junaid Ahmed Palak, yesterday asked people to be more cautious about downloading and using mobile 
apps.

Palak was speaking as chief guest at the International Cyber Security Conference, held at the conference room of the Bangladesh Computer Council. The  information technology and communication (ICT) Division organised the conference on the first anniversary of the division’s Incident Response Team.

The state minister said around 75 per cent of mobile apps available in the market have very poor security. “When you provide your personal information on those apps and get registered with those, you become a possible victim of information theft,” he noted.

He said since the security measures associated with most of the apps are very poor, hackers can easily breach those and obtain confidential information. “In this era, information is the new gold. Organisations are paying millions of dollars for information so that they can formulate advertisement campaigns for targeted customer groups,” he added.

Palak said that the usage of data increases every year by 44 per cent in Bangladesh. “It’s hard to imagine what percentage of this is secured,” he added.

The state minister urged the common people to check the ratings and comments before downloading and using any mobile app.

Regarding cyber security in the government establishment, Palak said a total of 22 establishments of the government was facing cyber security threats. “We have brought in experts from abroad and taken necessary measures to strengthen the cyber security of those establishments,” he added.

Speaking on the occasion, Tareq Barkatullah, director of the National Data Centre and deputy project director of Leverage of ICT (LICT), said the nature of cybercrime has diversified and preventive measures against the crime should also be diversified. “Plans are being taken to digitise almost all the documents of government offices. If someone steals documents from a computer, tracing that is very hard,” he said.

Barkatullah said such a crime can be detected only by those who have received specialised training. “That’s why all government offices will have a designated official to tackle cybercrimes. Apart from this, such a provision of having a cybercrime prevention official would help government offices achieve the ISO 27001 standard,” he added.

The ISO 27000 family of standards helps organisations keep information assets secure. ISO 27001 is the best-known standard in this family, providing requirements for an information security management system (ISMS).

Rimantas Žylius, former finance minister of Lithuania, presented the keynote paper during the inaugural session of the day-long programme. 

Cyber security experts from well-known companies, such as FireEye (FEYE), NRDS, CA Technologies, Microsoft, Cisco, REVE Systems and OneWorld USA, participated in the seminar.

Source: www.theindependentbd.com/home/printnews/84678

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