Security responsibilities
Despite growing concerns, at least 79 percent of consumers are knowingly using unprotected devices, with an additional 15 percent unsure of security levels. Almost 60 percent of mobile users expect mobile operators to take primary responsibility for protecting their mobile devices and services and more than half (56 percent) believe security features should be pre-installed on the handset at the time of purchase and provided free of charge.

"Concerns about specific mobile security risks or the loss of credibility in the reliability of services is a crucial issue for operators, particularly in mature markets. Yet, this research clearly highlights that consumer fears are growing in tandem with increased mobile functionality, jeopardizing the success of new revenue-generating services and increased operator ARPU," said Victor Kouznetsov, senior vice president of McAfee Mobile Security.

"Retaining consumer confidence will prove critical in ensuring life value and listening to the end user is becoming ever more important in creating innovative and intuitive services which subscribers will want, and trust, to use and are prepared to pay for."

McAfee Mobile Security Risk Management is a modular three-prong approach to enable mobile operators designed to help operators create a secure framework on which to build future services. The approach allows mobile operators to understand and mitigate security risks to their business, to protect and give peace of mind to customers, and to avoid the negative impact on their brand and business from malicious attacks.

The research was conducted by Datamonitor amongst 2000 mobile consumers with responses spread evenly across the US, UK and Japan.