According
to the reports published online by the tech security firm Include Security, the
Microsoft Outlook app for the Android OS has some security vulnerabilities that
hackers can take advantage of. Tech security firms are always working on the
popular software applications out there, trying to find chinks in the
application’s armour, so that they can develop better security solutions for
customers.
About the security issues in the
Microsoft Outlook app for Android
According
to these reports, the Outlook
setting in these apps for storing user data does not encrypt them
automatically. In other words, the Android OS Pin Number security feature alone
protects Outlook files stored in your mobile phone. If someone manages to
bypass this and access these Outlook files, they can easily read them using any
of the standard email applications that support the data format Outlook uses.
Lack of an Outlook setting for
automatic encryption of the mail client also means that your Outlook data
stored on external storage devices like micro SD cards can also be accessed in
the same manner. Once you remove the micro SD card from your smartphone, the
Pin Number security feature present in your Android OS no longer protects it.
This means
anyone can read these email messages stored in your micro SD card, simply by
removing the card and inserting it into some other computer device. Include
Security has since brought this problem to Microsoft’s attention. Microsoft has
issued a clarification stating that the encryption option was never a default
option in the Outlook app.
But, for
obvious security reasons, Microsoft should make the encryption of Outlook
messages and data, a default function in the Outlook app. It is worth
mentioning here that the Outlook app for Android was not developed directly by
Microsoft. They assigned this task to the tech firm Seven Networks. Whoever
designed it should have included an encryption option that encrypts and stores
the Outlook data by default.
According
to the Include Security report, the Android using the Outlook app should
therefore use an encryption software
application to protect the email account configured in their smartphone,
especially if it is stored in the micro SD card. The full report is still
available online, which you can read if you want to know more about these
security issues in the Outlook app.
No comments:
Post a Comment