If you’re the average business user today, you probably rely on a smartphone to manage much of your life, both personally and in the professional sense. As our phones have become so central to our lives, hackers now have the opportunity to attack through malicious applications. For this week’s tip, we wanted to go over a few ways to tell that an app might be an attack in disguise.

Excessive Permissions

Data security is a priority for many people, but even amongst them, mobile applications often aren’t even considered a potential threat to their data. While you should ever only download applications from an official application store, some attacks can potentially slip through the vetting process to be distributed via these means. Therefore, it is important to carefully consider every application you have installed and the permissions that each one demands. If these permissions seem excessive for the application’s needs, reconsider if the app is necessary to use (chances are, it isn’t). This helps protect you against the tactic that many cybercriminals use: getting a harmless app to the store, and then turning it malicious with an update once it is downloaded.

Rapid Battery Loss

Buckle up, it’s time for a lesson in physics.

According to the first law of thermodynamics, there is a set amount of energy present in the universe. Energy isn’t created or destroyed; it is simply transferred in different forms from one thing to another. This is important to our point.

Have you ever set your fully charged phone down, not touching it or interacting with it at all, only to later pick it up and find a significantly lower charge? While the technology behind the battery isn’t perfect, the amount of energy lost should not be that extreme. Your phone may be infected with malware, which uses your phone’s battery as it operates in the background processes. Check your battery settings to see which applications are using more power than they should be.

Sudden Password Changes

Let’s say that you type in the password to one of your accounts, and it bounces back labeled as incorrect. Fair enough, everyone makes mistakes. However, if this keeps happening, and you know that you’ve entered it correctly, there’s a good chance that your account has been infiltrated and taken over.

To resolve this, you’re going to have to reach out to the company and reclaim your account, if possible. Whether or not your account can be retrieved, you need to change the passwords for all the others too, just to be safe. Keeping to password best practices and restoring your device from a recent backup to clear out any lurking malware, are solid practices.

From your on-site infrastructure, to the cloud environments you’ve deployed, to the mobile devices your employees use, Dresner Group can help you manage your IT. Learn more about our many managed services by calling (410) 531-6727.