Risks highlighted as malicious apps target businesses and their customers

LONDON, UK — 22 September 2016 — New research from RiskIQ, the leader in external threat management, reveals that the number of malicious apps leveraging top UK brands has grown by 130% year on year[1]. The study by RiskIQ, examined mobile apps owned by or leveraging the brands of 45 top UK companies across five vertical sectors, to give a snapshot of the threats facing UK organizations and their customers from 2015 to today[2].

RiskIQ discovered 107,367 brand-associated blacklisted apps, representing 43% of the total number of apps and found an increase of 131% over the past year. Blacklisting occurs when an app fails a virus scan by one or more of the major virus vendors or if it links to a URL or IP address that is a known source of malware.

The research was undertaken using RiskIQ’s global web crawling infrastructure and virtual user technology which inspects over 170 different mobile app stores daily, extracting and examining over 13 million mobile apps.