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Being up-to-date means secu­rity – with mobile devices, too

Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in mobile device oper­ating sys­tems or apps are pop­ular gate­ways for crim­inal attacks. It will help pre­vent unpleasant sur­prises if you know what you can do about it.

Is your smart­phone or tablet still up-to-date? Many users cannot give a clear reply to this ques­tion. Yet a mobile device is only as secure to the extent that is up-to-date: Out­dated sys­tems often con­tain vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties which can be exploited by online crim­i­nals, for instance to plant mal­ware on a device or carry out other kinds of attack.

Some man­u­fac­turers, like Apple or Google, fix any vul­ner­a­bility in their devices promptly by sup­plying appro­priate updates or patches. At least they do for as long as your smart­phone or tablet is not that old – or unfor­tu­nately, not too cheap either. More expen­sive models do receive updates for longer, while no updates are pro­vided any longer for older devices at all. Other man­u­fac­turers take their time or don’t pro­vide any updates for some of their models at all – the secu­rity of your device is then com­pletely the owner’s responsibility.

To pro­tect your mobile device against attack as best as pos­sible, you should con­sider the fol­lowing tips:

  • Always install any updates promptly once you have been noti­fied one is available.
  • Acti­vate the auto­matic update fea­ture of your oper­ating system and apps.
  • Android smart­phones and tablets need virus pro­tec­tion, too – you should there­fore install an anti-mal­ware app.
  • Keep an eye on the end of their sup­port life­cycle espe­cially with older devices – the moment a man­u­fac­turer no longer offers any updates for your model, you must be par­tic­u­larly careful. Details can be found on every manufacturer’s website.

You can find fur­ther secu­rity rec­om­men­da­tions for mobile devices under our “5 steps for your dig­ital secu­rity” and “How to use a mobile banking app in a secure manner“.

 

What else would you like to learn about security when e-banking?

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Basic course

Find out about cur­rent Internet threats and some easy pro­tec­tive mea­sures, and how to securely use e-banking.

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Online course mobile banking/payments

Find out about mobile banking, mobile pay­ments and how to securely use these apps.

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Online course for the under-30s

Learn how to use your smart­phone securely. Next to basics, we will show you what you should know about social media, clouds, mobile banking and mobile payments.

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Course for SMEs

Is your organ­i­sa­tion suf­fi­ciently secure? Learn which mea­sures you can take to sig­nif­i­cantly strengthen your organisation’s IT security.

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