As the number of mobile devices increases, Cliff Saran talks to
Sandra England of PGP Security about the risk of mobile
viruses
It may be a solution waiting for a problem, but Sandra England,
president of PGP Security, Network Associates' security and hacking
division, is adamant mobile phone viruses are inevitable.
Psion has urged users to put in place tight policies owing to
the obvious security risk these devices pose when configured to
access confidential corporate information.
Security breaches on mobile devices number only a handful today.
But as new mobile applications are developed, said Network
Associates' England, "The number of viruses and invasion of privacy
[attacks] will grow as well." Unlike e-commerce, England believes
the mobile industry is well prepared for future hacking and virus
attacks. "The focus in e-business is to get the site up and
running… security is sometimes an afterthought." She said that on
mobiles security is considered up-front because these devices will
become so prevalent among the user community.
Psion for instance, has estimated that as many as 75,000 new
PDAs were shipped over Christmas alone. "What's important," she
noted, "Is to put security and anti-virus software at the
application layer." And today she said Network Associates has
something to offer here, in the form of software development kits
for building security into applications.
But could this all just be a case of the IT industry "crying
wolf." As far as Ovum senior analyst Graham Titterington is
concerned there is not much need for mobile anti-virus and security
measures today.
"Most mobile phones today are computationally pretty limited.
PDAs have the power but at the moment it is not worth hackers'
effort [to target such devices]." This is because in the main they
are used as unconnected devices. The risk, Titterington anticipates
will, occur when smart phones with built-in PDAs are connected to
always-on mobile networks such as GPRS.