The Appthority has released its App Reputation Report which shows hidden behaviors of top 50 free Android and iOS applications. The reports highlights modern problems of BYOD system, fragmentation of app market for developers, popular application categories, and handling of sensitive information.
The Appthority team analyzed the top 50 free apps from Apple App Store and Google Play. The experts were looking for risky app behaviors, possible security flaws and checked developers’ profiles. The report includes highlights such as:
- Both Android and iOS app markets are extremely fragmented when it comes to developers. 92% of iOS apps and 66 percent of Android apps of the top 50 free applications were created by unique developers.
- The most popular mobile platform apps are games and they make half of the top iOS apps and 1\5 of the top Android apps. This category of apps also has the most access to personal user data.
- Overwhelming majority of the applications (96% of iOS apps & 84% of Android apps) is able to access sensitive information, such as contact list and GPS location of the device.
- The gaming applications overall have more access to sensitive information but most of the business apps also peak in that info.
"As employees bring their own smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices into the workplace, they're introducing new security risks to the enterprise," said Domingo Guerra, president and co-founder of Appthority.
"IT departments used to control technologies used at work. But now, employees are bringing apps from various developers with access to all kinds of data on mobile devices, including business and personal information. With our App Reputation Report, we're showing the potential vulnerabilities behind the most popular apps. We want to help put IT back in control of securing company data."
The Appthority report is accessible here.
