Wireless vendors are rolling out a new generation of handheld computers called smartphones for corporate users, but many network executives say they won't consider them until the means to manage and secure them are clear.

For example, Nokia, which uses the Symbian operating system, recently made available the Nokia 9500 Communicator, a handheld with Wi-Fi and cellular support. This fall the company plans to ship a similar model, the 9300, without Wi-Fi. Nokia says they're the first smartphones it has designed specifically for corporate use. While Nokia created a VPN client, had Symantec develop anti-virus software and Pointsec for encryption for smartphones, users say that's not enough because wireless PDAs must support remote management to meet many corporate security policies.

"Few wireless PDAs meet our security requirements right out of the box," says Tamara Box, consultant with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which has seen rising use of wireless PDAs in the last year among healthcare staff.

She assisted in rolling out the department's Research in Motion BlackBerry and wireless handhelds based on Microsoft's Pocket PC and the Palm operating system. But to meet federal guidelines for use of wireless, she needed to find a way to make sure they could be remotely managed and wiped clean, that data would be encrypted using 140-2 government-approved encryption, and that some features, such as cameras, could be restricted. She ended up adding Trust Digital's Mobile Edge Security software designed for PDAs.

Hungary-based Laszlo Kovari, the IT security and audit manager for the Central Europe division of bottling company Pepsi Americas, is in a similar struggle to ensure that the wireless PDAs used in his region for sales forces follow the same corporate security guidelines set for laptops.

He says he added Trust Digital to the Palm Tungsten PDAs that salespeople use for the purposes of remote management and security. "You should be able to expect the same level of protection on a PDA as a PC to align these with corporate security policy," Kovari says.

"Device management is proving to be a difficult problem," says Haig Coulter, senior product manager at Nokia, noting there's no software designed for central management of the Nokia smartphones.

"It's a classic example of technology getting ahead of security," says Andrew Storm, information technology director at security firm nCircle, where employees are prohibited from transferring corporate data to wireless PDAs because of security concerns.

Storm says wireless PDAs - the BlackBerry is an exception - often lack central management and don't often have the security software the firm prefers, such as PGP encryption.

On the other hand, Mike Murray, director of vulnerability research at nCircle, likes the 4-G Palm LifeDrive he recently bought. It supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and he wants to use it as an alternative to his laptop.

Another smartphone corporate contender is Motorola, which early next year expects to ship the Moto Q, based on the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system, announced in May.