54% of companies planning to deploy mobile antivirus in 2010

More than half of companies are planning to deploy mobile anti-virus products and services this year.

According to the second part of the Mobile Security 2009 Survey by Goode Intelligence, 54 per cent of the organisations surveyed plan to deploy mobile anti-virus products and services, with 33 per cent planning to deploy mobile anti-virus products and services by March 2010. The remaining 67 per cent plan to deploy by September 2010.

The survey reveals that while nearly 71 per cent of organisations currently feel that the threat from mobile phone viruses is low, this number drops significantly for the perceived threat by 2011, with only 21 per cent believing the risk to be low and 29 per cent forecasting that the risk will be high or very high.

This rise in awareness and plans for deployment has been welcomed by Acumin Consulting, who co-produced the report. Marketing manager Gemma Paterson said that it was "reassuring to see that mSecurity is being taken seriously and becoming more of a priority for the IT and security functions".

Paterson said: “It is essential to make organisations aware of this developing challenge and seeing as currently only 13 per cent of organisations currently protect from mobile viruses, IT security managers will need to consider updating skill-sets and resourcing adequately for teams to ensure they are prepared for the risks arising from this transformation in the way we carry out business.”

Alan Goode, managing director of Goode Intelligence, said: “The threat from mobile viruses is currently low but with the rising adoption of data-centric applications on smartphones, including financial services, we feel that the threat will rise from 2010 onwards.

“Last year's iPhone worms could be just the start of a concerted attack on smartphones. The threat is increased by the proliferation of mobile app stores with users downloading applications, most of them free, to their smartphones. Can the app store providers guarantee 100 per cent that their certification programs will capture all malicious code that may be lurking in a mobile application?”

See original article on scmagazineuk.com