Oct/Nov 2006

Inevitably, the rise in popularity of mobile phones as computing devices has given rise to corresponding concerns about virus and other security threats. Hence the emergence of a new breed of anti-virus and similar products for these devices.

US-based Fortinet may not be the first to join this market, but it claims to be a pioneer in what it calls "multi-threat security solutions", and it now says it has come up with the first "mobile endpoint security solution" on the market to integrate full antivirus, MMS/SMS anti-spam, personal firewall and address book protection and IPSec VPN capabilities.

Its new integrated security software agent, FortiClient Mobile, is available for Microsoft Windows Mobile and Symbian OS-enabled mobile smartphones and PDAs. It is available for specified smart phones running Windows Mobile 5.0 and Symbian OS versions 7.0, 8.0 and 9.0.

How might these threats affect you? Well, Fortinet offers the example of Doombot, a denial of service (DOS) attack, which last year threatened to infect mobile devices via Web, MMS/SMS and Bluetooth, and could have increased battery power consumption and prevent handset reboot, disabling subscribers from accessing mobile carrier services and mobile enterprise applications.

 

Fortinet says its FortiClient Mobile is available for evaluation on www.fortinet.com, and will be available through key mobile carriers and selected phone set manufacturers.