Enterprise Mobility Bad Boy Recap: Facebook admits that its Official Android App accidentally steals your phone number.. and claims it fixed. Millions spent on finding Snowden for a leak, but Facebook – no big deal. (haha) Thanks for the article and catching this Norton! Silly  cartoon below, sums up my feelings. (from Geek and Poke) Full Link. Today we released a new version of Norton Mobile Security for Android devices that contains our new Norton Mobile Insight technology. Mobile Insight has analyzed over 4 million Android applications and processes tens of thousands of new applications every day. Through automatic and proprietary static and dynamic analysis techniques, Mobile Insight is able to automatically discover malicious applications, privacy risks, and potentially intrusive behavior. Further, Mobile Insight will tell you exactly what risky behavior an application will perform and give you specific, relevant, and actionable information. The ability of Mobile Insight to automatically provide granular information on the behavior of any Android application even surprised us when we reviewed the most popular applications exhibiting privacy leaks. Of particular note, Mobile Insight automatically flagged the Facebook application for Android because it leaked the device phone number. The first time you launch the Facebook application, even before logging in, your phone number will be sent over the Internet to Facebook servers. You do not need to provide your phone number, log in, initiate a specific action, or even need a Facebook account for this to happen. According to Google Play, hundreds of millions of devices have installed the Facebook application and a significant portion of those devices are likely affected. We reached out to Facebook who investigated the issue and will provide a fix in their next Facebook for Android release. They stated they did not use or process the phone numbers and have deleted them from their servers. Unfortunately, the Facebook application is not the only application leaking private data or even the worst. We will continue to post information about risky applications to this blog in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, if you wish to verify if your Facebook app or other applications are leaking private information, you can download Norton Mobile Security with Norton Mobile Insight and scan your device....

When it comes to enterprise mobile strategy, who better to virtually sit down with then Seimens Enterprise’s Randy Robert. 1)     In 2013, what will be hotter internal employee facing apps OR external (market) consumer facing apps? Internal employee apps will be hotter as more employees demand applications that make them more productive at work but emulate the consumer experience they enjoy on their personal applications.  The MEAPs (mobile enterprise application platforms) that are in the market today are progressing rapidly to make it easier for enterprises to develop across iOS and Android simply while integrating with existing business apps.  These platforms also make it easier for internal development teams, that have worked on legacy systems, to develop for the new mobile platforms with a much smaller learning curve. 2)     What is the biggest issue in enterprise mobility? The biggest issue today is that most enterprises don’t have a mobile strategy.  They think they are a ‘mobile company’ just because their employees carry smartphones and can be reached at all times.  They may go as far as to take an existing desktop application and shrink it down to a smartphone and call themselves ‘mobile’.   Neither of these cases represent a mobile strategy.  If fact, in most cases this does harm to a company’s mobile aspirations because it doesn’t meet expectations of the executives or the end-users.  Companies must start by defining use cases, objectives, measurements and key internal constituents before they embark on their mobile journey.  This creates an agreed path forward with clear expectations across the company and puts them on a path to truly being a mobile company. 3)     I’d love to get feedback on Mobile Enterprise Adoption Forumla, before I write my “thesis” on it. What are your thoughts on it? I agree 100% that Usability and Desirability are the keys to delivering a successful mobile application.  The days of developing enterprise apps that make the IT manager or CIO happy are over.  The focus is squarely now in the end-user because the competition for the time spent on a mobile app is fierce.  Enterprise mobile apps compete with FaceBook, Skype, Twitter, Dropbox, etc. for share of views on a mobile device. If the mobile app...

Mobile Enterprise App News. MEAN Summary: Good ole’ Gartner says security tech and services to hit $67.2 million this year Introduces app wrappers and app containers mentions Good, Mocana and Apperian Security Technology Adoption Growing. Enough Said  : ) Invincea mentioned. First I heard of them, but article seems promising. (I will research them and report back) Full Link. 10 Emerging Security Technologies Gaining Interest, Adoption By Robert Westervelt, CRN12:00 PM EST Mon. Jun. 17, 2013  Gartner forecasts the security technology and services market to reach $67.2 million in 2013, up 8.7 percent from 61.8 billion in 2012. The market is expected to grow to more than $86 billion by 2016. The growth is partly due to interest in a new set of emerging security technologies and a return of more capable defenses that address mobile security, authentication weaknesses and threats to data in the cloud. At the 2013 Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit, chief security officers and Gartner analysts described to CRN the new areas gaining interest. From new antimalware technologies designed to identify sophisticated attacks to application containers made to keep threats from gaining access to sensitive business data, a whole new line of technologies are being evaluated and adopted. Here are 10 security areas that are quickly gaining industry interest, as well as the solution providers that are paving the way. IT teams are rapidly learning that applying controls to an employee’s personally owned device is not easy, according to Gartner. To address the bring-your-own-device phenomenon, security is moving to the application level. Several vendors, including Good Technology, Mocana and Apperian offer application containers or wrappers that enable businesses to extend security controls to the individual mobile app. Browser components are getting their own sandbox, so why shouldn’t browsers or commonly used applications? Fairfax, Va.-based Invincea uses virtualization and a lightweight Windows app to move Web browsers, PDF readers, Office suite and executable files into a secure virtual container. Attacks are contained and uploaded to either an on-premise appliance or Invincea’s cloud-based service. Cupertino, Calif.-based Bromium is also gaining interest with its hardware isolation, providing a microvisor that isolates system processes. Although it currently only supports systems running the Intel i3, i5, i7...

Mobile Enterprise App News. MEAN Summary: Akula launched by Verivo. My interview of Akula with Verivo: MEAP Comparison  “Dropping like its hot” on June 28th Team dev license is $5k/year. Deployment license start $30k/year. But get yourself a freebie 30 day trial. John Cox’s (Network World) take below. Full Link Verivo’s middleware marries mobile apps with enterprise data Akula libraries, server simplify building transaction-based apps By John Cox, Network World June 20, 2013 10:13 AM ET Network World – Most enterprise mobile apps are not like most consumer apps. Those differences require features not found in most consumer-focused UI design and development tools. The missing features mean developers have to do extensive custom coding to link each mobile app with an array of back end applications and services. That’s the rationale behind Verivo’s Akula software, which is a set of server-based middleware components and client-side libraries that can be used to securely connect mobile app front-ends with the transaction systems that form the heart of most companies’ business. “Today, iOS developers for example, face big problems in creating these kinds of apps, and integrating them with [resources like] Active Directory, tracking changes offline, and then resyncing [those changes] with backend transaction systems,” says Steve Levy, CEO of Verivo. To create and run apps that leverage enterprise databases, security, and applications such as SAP or Oracle Applications, mobile developers need four key capabilities, according to Levy. Mobile apps need to interact with backend systems and resources. They need to be “visible” to IT groups for tech and customer support. They have to be handle corporate and customer data securely, and be protected. Finally, mobile apps need to do all this whether they are designed as web apps or native apps. Akula provides the software to do this. The Akula Server is a J2EE server that provides a range of traditional “middleware” functions to client apps: standard and custom interfaces to backend systems, security, authentication, identify management, APIs to enterprise apps and to system administration software such as Tivoli. The server can run as a hosted service or behind the corporate firewall in a data center. Secondly, in the client app, developers make use of an Akula SDK for the client...