Dubai: The global mobile app economy is booming due to rapidly increasing mobile internet speeds, secure identity solutions provider HID Global said.
Marc T. Hanne, director of sales at HID Global, told Gulf News the increase in broadband penetration has naturally led to a rising volume of mobile web and app interactions.
According to the ‘Digital, Social & Mobile Worldwide in 2015’ report, Saudi Arabia and the UAE lead the way with mobile broadband penetration of over 100 per cent.
According to a research firm International Data Corporation, mobile device users installed nearly 156 billion mobile applications worldwide in 2015, generating $34.2 billion in direct (non-advertising) revenue. These figures are forecast to grow to more than 210 billion installs and nearly $57 billion (Dh209 billion) in direct revenue in 2020.
Security and confidentiality are the major concerns for people not using mobile payments as smartphones are an increasingly attractive target for online criminals.
According to Symantec’s latest report, the UAE’s threat profile has worsened on the global ranking from 49 in 2014 to 41 in 2015 with the numbers of attacks originating in the UAE increasing over the last year due to its world-class IT infrastructure, connectivity and an attractive business environment.
Hanne said the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2), which was adopted by the European Parliament last year, is shaking up security within the financial and payment markets. Security requirements for mobile banking go beyond authentication and frictionless security needs security beyond passwords.
“PSD2 is approved by the European Union and the target is to make cross-border payments as easy, efficient and secure,” he said.
He said that PSD2 heralds strong customer authentication. This is a more “secure authentication concept” that goes beyond traditional authentication and involves at least two of three elements — knowledge (such as security questions), possession (such as a mobile device) and inherence (such as biometric data).
It is not enough to trust username and password, so PSD2 plays an important role, he added.
“The integrated and layered authentication solutions not only reduces security risk at front-end user access points, but also at storage points. All sensitive data is encrypted before storage in the back end database. Sensitive database fields are digitally signed to prevent manual tampering by a rogue database administrator employee,” he said.
When asked whether wearable devices are going to be the future of payments, he said that “we anticipate wearables will be a new frontier for consumers., which is why we have added wearables to our Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions offerings. We are already seeing the adoption of wearables in the younger generation - trendsetters of the future.”
