* Blurring of PCs, smartphones impacts security considerations
It’s no secret that smartphones are gaining the power and functionality to render them on a functional par with PCs. Are the security risks catching up, too?
Illustrating the blurring of PCs and smartphones, handset market-share leader Nokia has taken to calling its handsets “mobile computers.” The goal is to emphasize that the devices are “computers that you can talk on,” said Victor Brilon, the company’s convergence product manager at a recent Wireless Communications Alliance (WCA) meeting in Silicon Valley.
Meanwhile, Gartner has reportedly predicted that in 2008, smartphones will actually out-ship laptops and that there will be more than 300 million in use worldwide by 2011. The more popular devices become, the greater is the cybercriminal’s interest in targeting them.
Given that the distinction between smartphones and PCs is blurring, what is the state of the insidious malware, denial-of-service attacks and other risks that have long plagued the PC industry?
On the one hand, there are more operating systems (OS) available for smartphones than PCs, diluting an attacker’s incentive to target a given one. But the fragmentation also increases the enterprise challenge of having a common security scheme across multiple mobile platforms.
Meanwhile, people are using their phones to store and share increasingly sensitive information. For example, users in Asia can turn their mobile phones into cash using “pay by wave” technology, points out Khoi Nguyen, group product manager for mobile security at Symantec, in a Symantec-published Q&A.
Nguyen suggests that “the mobile threat landscape is similar to what the PC threat landscape was 15 years ago. For example, for every mobile virus variant in the wild today, there are more than 450 variants for the PC.”
Still, it’s becoming imperative to run antivirus, antispam and firewall programs on mobile clients and to match the program with the mobile OS. Symantec and competitor McAfee, for example, offer software that combines these features into a single product that works with both Windows Mobile and Symbian mobile operating systems.
