Now that more than 50 percent of Americans’ financial transactions are conducted using mobile devices – and this figure is rapidly escalating – it comes as no surprise that computer security giant McAfee names malicious software targeting mobile devices as the #1 cyber threat for 2011. But threats to financial data are hardly the only mobile cyber crime trend.
As White House Cyber Czar Howard Schmidt pointed out at an Infragard Alliance breakfast in late January, the technology and capabilities available on mobile devices are way ahead of the current state of security, presenting a high value target for hackers, criminals and terrorists.
For example, applications like Venmo and Bump facilitate payments from mobile devices by linking to bank and credit card information and transmitting payment data via barcodes on the screen, by infrared or by NFC (near-field communications). Starbucks has already made available to customers its own iPhone payment application.
On December 20, The Washington Post published an in-depth article by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter, Dana Priest, and political commentator and author, William M. Arkin, entitled: 
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