The Indian government is now encouraging a digital mode of payments after demonetizing its undervalued currency a month ago. But noted chipset maker Qualcomm said that none of the mobile banking, digital payments and e-wallets applications offered in India are secure with regards to cyber security.
San Diego-based Qualcomm feels that all those mobile banking and wallet apps used in India and around the world do not use hardware security and this makes the users extremely vulnerable to cyber attacks. Since the operations are in Android mode, the hackers can easily steal the passwords.
In order to cut down the threat, Qualcomm has decided to approach digital payment companies for using secure environments for processing payments on their mobile phones. The American multinational semiconductor and telecommunication company is providing a security execution layer at the chip level. So, this layer will separate transactions on a mobile phone from the operating system and can help the mobile security software keep a smart check on financial transactions.
Qualcomm will come up with a security feature embedded at chip level which will verify user payment gateways using unique features like ID, phone manufacturer signature, the android version in the phone, rootkit of the operating system, location and time–which are nearly impracticable to duplicate.
Chipsets embedded with device attestation features will be shipped to mobile phone makers in 2017 and so end users will enjoy those features by the end of next year.
On a recent note, Qualcomm has partnered with Czech security Software Company AVAST which detects and alerts users when their mobile phone is infected with a virus or malware.
As India plans to make Aadhaar based authentication a mandatory for all digital payments, Qualcomm is also said to come up with a new security feature to isolate the said authentication from cyber attacks.
Note- Aadhaar is like a social security number which tags each Indian individual based on the parameters such as date of birth and biometrics.
