Symantec Safeguards Handhelds With New Antivirus Products

The line features two products for the enterprise market,Symantec Antivirus for Handhelds Corporate Edition and Corp-orate Edition with Event and Configuration Manager,and a third solution geared for consumers. The products support Palm OS and Microsoft Pocket PC devices.

Even though handhelds haven't yet been much of a target for cyberattacks, the devices are playing a bigger role in the corporate IT infrastructure, said Laura Garcia, group product manager at Symantec, Cupertino, Calif. Because handhelds are becoming pervasive, they need to be secured, she said.

"The door is open for all types of applications and information to flow onto that device, and with that, there's the threat of malicious code," she said.

Initial installation of Symantec's antivirus handheld application takes place on a desktop PC, then is installed on the handheld with the next synchronization, Garcia said. The software performs both realtime virus scans to detect and block malicious code on the device and on-demand scans.

Virus definitions are updated with desktop synchronization. Users with a wireless Internet connection can download virus definitions directly to the device over the Web.

With the corporate editions, administrators can schedule scans and integrate virus definitions with Symantec's corporate desktop antivirus. The version with the Event and Configuration Manager provides centralized logging, alerting and reporting.

Gary Cannon, president of Advanced Internet Security, a solution provider in Colorado Springs, Colo., said handheld security will become a necessity but his clients haven't expressed demand for it yet.

"I'm not sure how great the need is yet," he said. "We haven't heard anyone express concern about it among our client base, but that doesn't mean it won't happen tomorrow."

Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition costs $27 per license for 250 to 499 nodes and $19 per license for more than 2,000 nodes.