McAfee working on iPhone Virus protection
By Michael W. Jones
McAfee’s CEO says his company is working on a virus protection product for the iPhone, shortly after it was announced that Symantec is at work on a similar product.
The burgeoning numbers of iPhones in the marketplace is attracting, it seems, every software maker everywhere to either produce or announce an app for it. McAfee’s offering was announced ahead of the company’s investor day in New York, by CEO Dave DeWalt, who said, “We are working on a much more comprehensive suite for the Apple family.” McAfee already makes a small set of antivirus software for the Mac.
According to a company senior vice president last week, Symantec is developing a backup system that would protect data on the iPhone and allow users to access information stored on their PCs or on the Web, said Symantec Senior Vice President Rowan Trollope. Presumably, that service would also be able to scan the backed up files for viruses. Symantec is the world’s number one software security seller. From the description, the product from Symantec would duplicate at east part of the functionality of Apple’s MobileMe product.
The iPhone is making rapid advances into the corporate enterprise smartphone market, but some security administrators are wary about connecting the Apple device to their secure corporate network. The lack of encryption on the device itself worries some observers and some security software vendors also have issues over not being able to access the list of applications that are sandboxed on an iPhone, according to a Reuters story. In DeWalt’s words, “The more applications become available, the more the threat of security and the threat of identity and data loss is there.”
It is somewhat amazing that all of this is in advance of even a hint of a threat of viruses for the iPhone. Yes, anything is possible. Sure, it could happen. But so far, it does not seem that there is anything for such software to protect the iPhone against. All of the noise in this area is coming from people who stand to make a buck from such software if it is introduced. Like the all-too-cozy relationship between the virus hackers and the virus cops, one wonders if it is not all about smoke, mirrors, and the money.
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Stumble It!
May 17th, 2009
Symantec’s plans don’t make sense given what Apple already provides via built-in Exchange connectivity, Apple’s exceptional consumer IMAP service, and Apple’s FREE iTunes backup software (guaranteed to be installed on every iPhone users computer). Symantec is creating bloatware (again) that iPhone users will not want to use – making it undeployable in a corporate environment. There is interest in iPhone corporate compliance and anti-virus abilities so the simple solution that provides simply that will win. Go McAfee!
July 30th, 2009
I read a good story about iphone virus
http://taszara.com/iphone-hacker-is-back-iphone-virus-is-discovered/1058/