Privoro recently attended the GSF Modern Warfare conference at Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne (I highly recommend researching the history of this division if you’re unfamiliar). Although our trip to Fort Bragg was a first, what wasn’t new at all is the problem smartphones are causing government employees across the military, intel agencies and Capitol Hill.

Our world is filled with news and conversations about hacking. From well-publicized public hacks like Target, OPM and Equifax down to the private internal discussions of how to keep information safe, hacking is all around us.

Current State

Everything we do, everywhere we go, a data trail is following us, recording our actions, processing our data, and it’s going to intensify in the next several years presenting the question, will we have to pay for privacy? Yes, pay for privacy. Sounds ridiculous, and it is, but those that can afford privacy solutions will pay for it. Let me explain a little more.

Over the last couple of years I’ve become much more security- and privacy-focused. Why?

The first time I heard about “Fake Cell Towers”, I thought to myself, Hold up. There is such a thing as a “fake” cell tower?!? Why would someone want or use a fake cell tower?

You either know somebody or it has happened to you – you have a conversation around your smartphone, check your social media or news feed, and boom, the topics of your conversation are being advertised on your smartphone. Most people’s reaction is usually some combination of “WTF?!?” and “Is my phone really listening in on me?” This isn’t new news, but mobile espionage (the modern catch phrase for smartphones listening, watching and tracking your every movement without you knowing) is certainly getting discussed a lot more, and on many levels.

You can now add Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore) to the growing list of government officials and entities urging national security advisors to provide a higher level of security for government smartphones.

Recent news reports, covering two separate incidents, confirm a conclusion we continue to draw attention to when talking with security professionals, our customers and anyone concerned about their mobile security posture: Smartphones are inherently vulnerable, and little – to date – can be done to protect, detect, and remediate the compromises. Without full view into the ecosystem of the phone, software solutions alone will never be enough to safeguard the important information of users and protect their privacy.

In today’s digital-driven world, just about everything we do creates a data trail that can live forever. Clicking on a website, opening the garage door, adjusting the temperature in our houses, taking a rideshare to the airport, making a dinner reservation, scanning our boarding passes, “liking” a photo, recording a television show, sending a text to a client, making a request into a digital assistant … all create an unwitting data trail. That data is stored, analyzed, brokered, distributed, parsed, combined and attributed to individuals, companies and nation states.