White Paper Shows Mobile Industry is Unified on Cybersecurity to Protect and Secure Its Infrastructure

Also highlights the industry’s need for policymakers to allow them to communicate throughout the ecosystem to better protect itself and its customers

San Diego – On day two of MobileCON™, CTIA-The Wireless Association® released “Today’s Mobile Cybersecurity: Protected, Secured and Unified” white paper, which explains how the wireless industry works together throughout the ecosystem to protect its infrastructure and consumers from cyberthreats. The paper also explains what policymakers can do to help the industry on cybersecurity and highlights the challenges and barriers that complicate the issue.

According to a CTIA-sponsored IT decision maker survey that was conducted in July 2012, more than 96 percent of these experts said that security was their “most important, important or challenging” issue. As the white paper shows, the wireless industry’s ecosystem is comprised of a number of players – consumers, mobile network operators, device manufacturers, application marketplaces, application developers, operation system vendors, chipset manufacturers, network service systems, support software vendors, value added service providers and network equipment manufacturers – which adds layers of complexity and challenges for each entity to separately and jointly protect itself against threats. With the relatively open technological ecosystem and the fact that independent reports project an exponential rise in consumer adoption of smartphones, tablets and other “mini-computer” like devices, mobile communications are an increasingly attractive target for cybercriminals, hackers and hacktivists.

Individually, many of CTIA’s member companies are proactively doing all they can to protect their infrastructure and their customers. Yet as the white paper underscores, these companies need to be able to communicate with each other to alert them to potential issues and discuss how to best solve problems. CTIA and its member companies need policymakers to allow this information sharing throughout the ecosystem, and as appropriate, with government and academia.

As many policymakers have already understood, cybersecurity is an extremely complicated issue that cannot be easily addressed by one solution or by one sector of the wireless ecosystem. Instead, the answer is that all of these players, throughout the wireless industry, government and academia, must be able to work together to create flexible, dynamic and responsive countermeasures to stay one step ahead of those who target mobile communications.

In addition to the wireless industry’s efforts, consumers play a vital role in cybersecurity. As the white paper highlights, from passwords to encryption to parental controls, many wireless companies offer tools that may be customized based on their customers’ needs and requirements while offering better security and data protection. When consumers actively use these tools, in conjunction with the individual wireless companies’ activities, everyone benefits by being better protected by the industry’s ability to deliver advanced security to manage the risk of the evolving and complex mobile cyberthreat landscape.

“With consumers relying on mobile devices for everything from banking to health care to utilities, it’s vital that the individual companies and the industry are able to communicate with each other, government, academia and experts to protect its infrastructure and its customers from those who are actively and persistently targeting mobile communications,” said Steve Largent, President and CEO of CTIA. “We appreciate the policymakers who have recognized how complex this ecosystem is and that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ or ‘silver bullet’ solution. We will continue to advocate for a real-world approach where the companies, throughout the wireless industry, are tapped to configure our nation’s cybersecurity posture in a fashion that is flexible and adaptive to the changing threat environment.”

“Today’s Mobile Cybersecurity: Protected, Secured and Unified” white paper was developed by CTIA’s Cybersecurity Working Group (CSWG), which is comprised of senior representatives from companies throughout the wireless industry. The white paper is available at: http://ctia.it/VBm9lY (PDF).

The survey was conducted in July 2012 with 500 IT professionals who worked for a variety of different sized companies, ranging from those with fewer than 100 employees to more than 5,000 employees. The IT decision maker survey is available at: http://ctia.it/QIcIzG (PDF). To see charts of some of the statistics, please visit: http://ctia.it/T6sQ03 (PDF).



CTIA-The Wireless Association® (www.ctia.org) is an international organization representing the wireless communications industry. Membership in the association includes wireless carriers and their suppliers, as well as providers and manufacturers of wireless data services and products. CTIA advocates on behalf of its members at all levels of government. The association also coordinates the industry’s voluntary best practices and initiatives, and sponsors the industry’s leading wireless tradeshows. CTIA was founded in 1984 and is based in Washington, D.C.