In a flurry of mobile security announcements at the 3GSM World Congress, both Kaspersky and Sophos have announced handset anti-virus products, while McAfee produced a "change of strategy".
These announcements mean that almost all the major players in AV have atleast one mobile AV product, in spite of a widely acknowledged lack ofactual attacks.
Kaspersky's Anti-Virus Mobile runs on the Symbian and Windows mobileplatforms, while Sophos has aimed at Windows first, with a Symbianoffering to follow.
"The mobile threat is small, and we must be proportional in our responseto it," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos."However, as more smartphones come to market and are adopted into theworkplace, the theft and loss of corporate data can be a potentialthreat."
McAfee, meanwhile, has decided that the handset install market is tooimmature, and is to concentrate on security at the carrier level. JanVolzke, head of worldwide marketing at McAfee Mobile, said: "We've seena linear increase in mobile malware since 2001, and there's a lot ofeffort going into producing malware that will work cross-platform, suchas through J2ME and SMS."
