United States. Surprisingly, 99.2% of U.S. government Android users use outdated operating systems, exposing them to hundreds of vulnerabilities.
These figures are a major concern as government agencies store extremely sensitive information. If that data falls into the wrong hands, it could wreak havoc on a large scale.
Let's not forget that due to COVID-19, most government employees had to quickly switch to remote work. That is, workers began using their mobile devices to access government data more than ever, which in turn created a large attack surface for cybercriminals.
A mobile security company, Lookout, provides the numbers. They analyzed their clients working in federal, state, and local government agencies and used mobile security software called Lookout Security for Work. Data was collected from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020.
The number of operating system (OS) vulnerabilities were extracted from the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) website. CVE is an international community-driven effort to catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Returning to the analysis, it appears that up to 22.8% of U.S. government workers. They still use the Android 8 operating system.
This version of the operating system is called Android Oreo and was released to the public on August 21, 2017. This operating system has 636 known vulnerabilities. We can expect countless new attack vectors to emerge as time goes on.
In the future, 28.2% of federal, state and local government employees use the Android 9 operating system. According to publicly available data, this operating system has 173 publicly known vulnerabilities. This version of Android is known as Android Pie and was released to the world on August 6, 2018.
Next up is Android 10, the most popular operating system among U.S. government employees. More than 38.3% of workers run this operating system on their Android devices. This operating system has more than 266 known vulnerabilities to date and was originally released on September 3, 2019.
Finally, as of March 10, 2021, the newest Android operating system is version 11. It launched on September 8, 2020, but only 0.08% of U.S. government workers have upgraded their phones to this version. Android 11 has more than 50 publicly known vulnerabilities.
iOS users are more cautious
The report reveals that 67.8% of U.S. federal, state and local government employees use the latest version of iOS 14 on their iPhones. This version of the operating system has more than 50 known vulnerabilities.
Still, nearly a third (27.9%) of government workers run the iOS 13 version, which has more than 195 known security issues or bugs. This iOS version was first released on September 19, 2019.
Only 3.4% of employees use iOS 12 and 0.04% use iOS 11, with 65 and 130 publicly known vulnerabilities, respectively.
To conclude, it is one of the most essential cybersecurity practices to keep a mobile operating system updated. We don't know why so many government employees choose not to update their phones, but no matter the reason, it leaves them exposed to hundreds of attack vectors.
Source: Atlas VPN.
