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2010-05-31 14:59:36 | |
| Symantec's "Norton Everywhere" initiative plans to extend protection and usability to every Internet-connected device. | |
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Symantec officially announced last week their plan to extend their computer and Internet security strategy to mobile devices, with the first and foremost target being smartphones. Norton Everywhere "spans the areas of mobile safety, web safety across any device and embedded services on smart devices," reads the press release on Symantec's Web site. They split the initiative into three distinct projects, which target three specific markets: Norton Mobile, Norton DNS and Norton for Smart Devices.
Norton Mobile This is probably the most important part of Norton Everywhere, or at least the most visible and the one that is most likely to become widespread. Essentially, "Norton Mobile will address some of today’s most common issues for smartphones, including device loss and data protection." By teaming up with growing smartphone vendor HTC (maker of Google's Nexus One, among others), Symantec wants to deliver security software for Android and Windows Mobile platforms. The new Norton Smartphone Security Beta for Android is scheduled for release in June and will allow users to lock or wipe a lost or stolen device, in addition to providing anti-spam and anti-malware capabilities. They also launched a new Web site for mobiles, Norton Mobile (m.norton.com), to provide users with news and updates from Norton. Norton DNS Similar to Open DNS or Google Public DNS, Norton DNS is supposed to allow safer Web access to home users by routing traffic through Symantec's servers, which analyze Web queries for malicious content such as counterfeit Web pages. An application for Android devices will also be launched in June to provide this service over wi-fi. Norton for Smart Devices This part of the Norton Everywhere initiative is aimed at all non-PC devices that are connected to the Internet. These devices--which include TVs, Blu-Ray drives and others like picture frames--are expected to double in number before 2014 to reach 20 billion, according to an IDC study cited by Symantec. The company's partnership with Moncana Corporation will hopefully help bringing security to these devices as they become more advanced and potentially vulnerable. All of these applications and/or services are still at the Beta stage and therefore are available for free. For now, threats on mobile devices are quite rare, but the potential is there, so it is better to start working on protection now then having to react to exploits on unattended vulnerabilities. One thing is for sure, Symantec is diversifying its activities, as we were saying two weeks ago when they bought part of VeriSign. | |
Reference 1: http://www.itpro.co.uk/623812/symantec-unveils-mobile-security-for-ipad-iphone-and-android
Reference 2: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security-management/2010/05/28/symantec-pushes-security-to-android-iphone-40089086/
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