Smart phones, smarter viruses

TECHNOLOGY: With 10-12 million users, India is a good market for smartphone security software companies.

We're yet to claim victory over computer malware, but here comes another threat "" mobile viruses. Research organisation IDC estimates that the market for mobile security software in India will grow by 70 per cent a year and by 2008, reach around $1 billion.

Symantec, McAfee and F-Secure are the front-running players in supplying security software for handsets. And all of them feel that tapping the domestic smartphone base of 10-12 million users is worth it.

Kimmo Alkio, president & CEO, F-Secure says, "Today, you are more likely to get hit by Windows malware than by any mobile phone threat."

Yet, antivirus makers like F-Secure are raising the red flag as they predict the number of mobile attacks to escalate over the next year or two. "I think we are really at the tipping-off point."

According to Juniper Research "some sort" of mobile security product will be installed in almost eight per cent (around 250 million) of mobile phones by 2011.

N Ajay Kumar, country manager, Aventail India agrees: "Smartphones or converged devices like Blackberry have become the norm in Indian enterprises."

He feels enterprises have made a healthy contribution in adopting security solutions. Aventail's Connect Mobile for Windows mobile smartphones leverages the unified access control policies of the Secure Sockets Layer Virtual Private Network (SSL VPN, which can be used with a standard web browser), to limit access to sensitive corporate data based on individual ID.

"In the event of mobile theft, corporates won't have trouble blocking or even deleting confidential data from a device that is secured with Aventail's solution."

Securing content (anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-spyware and content filtering) is expected to be the biggest sector in mobile security, notes Juniper Research, accounting for 40 per cent of the total security market.

"The security threat does not just cover mobile viruses and malware but identity theft, too. We expect revenues from mobile data and mobile file encryption products to outstrip those in the PC market by 2011," the report continues.

Vishal Dhupar, managing director, Symantec India, is similarly optimistic, "In general, we foresee that our products will be on all handsets. India is adding thousands of smartphones every month, which lends us business opportunity to expand our mobile solutions for customers and enterprises."

However, the average individual mobile security product, moderately priced at Rs 1,800-Rs 2,000, hasn't exactly been flying off shelves.

Says Kartik Shahani, regional director (Sales), McAfee, "We are yet to see customers demanding security solutions for their smartphones, even as enterprise customers have been growing steadily." Symantec, too, chooses to remain upbeat about individual customers, while it renews its focus on enterprises.

Last year saw the emergence of SMiShing (phishing via SMS) and spyware (MobiSpy) in the mobile domain. Yet mobile service providers continue to focus on their networks rather than phones, as they try to thwart mobile virus threats.

According to Shahani, there exists a large gap between the kind of protection operators consider important and that which they actually deploy. "We are in talks with operators to deploy applications and device-level protection."

The mobile world should not repeat the mistakes of the PC world, opine experts. Malware protection services ought to be built into networks first, and device protection should be the last resort. It would be ideal if a network were able to recognise and eliminate threats, but that concept is perhaps too futuristic.