Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq:SYMC), a world leader in Internet security technology, today announced the development of the world's first anti-virus technology for the Palm OS(R) platform. This new security prototype incorporates Symantec's award-winning anti-virus engine technologies re-engineered to run efficiently on handheld computers and other portable applications.
"The ubiquitous devices and platforms that will enable the Internet to be available everywhere pose new risks and challenges," said Ron Moritz, Symantec's chief technical officer. "As corporations embrace handheld devices and extend their network, securing programs and data on new platforms will become a necessity. Our goal is to safeguard critical data against potential attacks anywhere data wants to be by providing Internet security on a variety of platforms."
According to a 1999 IDC report titled "Smart Handheld Devices Market Review and Forecast," an estimated 50 million personal handhelds will enter businesses worldwide by 2003. Additionally, Forrester Research estimates that the mobile workforce will account for 57 percent of the total workforce in the next two years -- a rise from the current 35 percent.
Although there are currently no known computer virus, worm or Trojan horse threats targeting handheld devices, the Palm OS is susceptible to malicious code like other mainstream computing platforms since it runs a wide variety of programs.
Symantec's anti-virus prototype technology uses an optimized "micro-engine" to enable researchers at the Symantec AntiVirus Research Center (SARC) to detect known potential threats on the Palm OS platform. Due to the smaller memory and storage requirements on handhelds, Symantec is also investigating ways to leverage heuristics and other more advanced non-fingerprint-based technologies to eliminate the dependence on the larger virus definitions used in today's anti-virus products.
Researchers at the Symantec AntiVirus Research Center (SARC) have received numerous patents on anti-virus technologies and have authored books, including Internet Security Professional Reference and Windows NT Server 4: Security, Troubleshooting and Optimization. Additionally, they regularly contribute to Virus Bulletin, Secure Computing, Communications of the ACM and other major computer security journals.
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