April 4, 2006
Fear of handset viruses deter companies: survey
Cellular phone viruses are still rare, but a study has found that more than 60 percent of global companies mention security concerns as a reason for not giving employees advanced handsets, reports Reuters.
82 percent of businesses polled expect a cellular network to be more at risk than a fixed-line network, but only a quarter have assessed the real threat that comes from their staff's handsets.
There are currently about 100 cellular viruses that can disable a phone or create bills of hundreds of euros by sending pricey picture messages.
While this is still a tiny number compared with personal computer viruses, the threat is expected to increase. Advanced cellular phones run the same kind of applications as desktop and laptop computers, and they have multiple wireless connections to get infected and spread a virus, he added.
Research firm IDC believes the market for cellular security software will grow about 70 percent a year to nearly $1 billion in 2008.
One of the reasons for the relatively slow spread of cellular phone viruses so far has been the greater variety of software running cellular phones compared with computers, which mostly run on Microsoft's. Consequently, to target a large number of cellular phones, writers of virus software have to put in a lot more work.
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