A new report from Juniper Research claims that more than 80 percent of smartphones worldwide are unprotected and open to malware. The report also found that the number of unprotected devices won’t change through the year, despite the fact that more security apps are on the market.

However, average users are starting to get it and consumer awareness is going up, so an estimated 1.3 billion smartphones and tablets will have some form of protection by 2018, but at the moment the number of protected devices is just 325 million.

Mobile malware is coming under scrutiny thanks to the popularity of BYOD, which is proving more trouble than it’s worth for many IT departments. As more and more people start using their own devices for work, security in the workplace becomes more critical – yet it’s also harder to improve it thanks to the basic nature of BYOD and the use of several platforms for the same job.

Mobile malware is on the rise, especially Android malware. Google is trying to combat the phenomenon, but for the time being malicious developers seem to be one step ahead. Android is also getting its first ransomware, which could become a problem in its own right. Locking people out of their phones and stealing their information could work as a form of ransom as many users now have more personal information on their phones than PCs.