£400,000 prizes for mobile phone security ideas

Four cash prizes worth £100,000 are up for grabs to the designers and inventors who work out the best way of securing mobile phones.

The government funded Design Council is offering the prizes in a bid to find a creative solution to mobile security as sensitive data is increasingly stored on handsets.

Plans by mobile operators and banks to turn handsets into an e-wallet are making improved mobile phone security a must.

By offering a cash prize, the Design Council aims to encourage wacky and creative entries.

Research shows that 80% of mobile phones now contain data that could be used by thieves to access bank accounts, steal a person’s identity, or sell personal data.

Furthermore, the average young person today carries around £180 worth of gadgets with them – such as handsets and digital media players.

The Design Council said the challenge to make phones secure can be divided into three categories:

Making handsets harder or less desirable to steal
Making the data stored on mobiles harder or less desirable to steal
Making e-wallet transactions secure and fraud proof.

Kester said: “21st century society loves its gadgets but the cleverer and cooler we make our products, the more they expose us and our children to serious crime such as mugging, identity theft and bank fraud.

“That’s why we are calling on our great well-spring of designers, technologists and manufacturers to help us all get ahead of the next crime wave and be more creative than the criminals.”