Symantec plans to dive deeper into the mobile security market with new capabilities for enterprises and communication service providers.
Symantec is talking up its mobile security plans.
As part of a push across its consumer and enterprise portfolio,
Symantec is adding support for Google Android and Apple iOS - the
operating system for the iPhone and iPad - as well as an upcoming
solution aimed at communication service providers.
The focus is on helping organizations address the
challenges around securing mobile devices as the
products proliferate through enterprises. According to a report
from IDC, vendors shipped 55 percent more mobile device shipments in
the first half of 2010 than they did during the first six months of
2009, with
Android and iOS-based devices having close to one-third of the market for the year.
For enterprises, the heterogeneity of the mobile market is part of
the challenges they face, explained Piero DePaoli, director of product
marketing for the core security group at Symantec.
"The growth of iPhone and Android has turned this into a market
that really has five very strong players," he said. "That means to the
enterprises that it is very difficult to
standardize on one platform,
and then when you do allow all five of those major operating systems to
work within your company, it's near impossible to keep up with all of
the changes for all of those different operating systems."
"With all those different mobile operating systems, it becomes super
important for the IT manager to have a single place to be able to
manage all of them," he said, adding Symantec offers organizations
the ability to do that.
The extended support for Android and iOS builds on Symantec's
previous support for Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices in Symantec
Mobile Management 7.0. On the consumer side, the company has Norton
Mobile Security for Android still in beta, but it is expected to be
generally available in the coming months.
The main challenges facing IT when it comes to mobile security tend
to revolve around management, analysts told eWEEK. For Symantec,
addressing that has meant building in new features such as remote wipe,
password policy enforcement and device inventory.
"Through some of the acquisitions that we've made this year we've
also been able to get some more mobile capabilities," DePaoli said.
"Through our acquisitions of GuardianEdge and PGP, we have a mobile
encryption offering for some of the mobile platforms, and through our
acquisitions of VeriSign we now have a two-factor authentication system
that can be used on a mobile phone in place of a token that's called
the VeriSign Identity Protection, or VIP service. Then lastly we will
also have the ability to do device certificates for authentication."
Communication service providers are being targeted as well with a
service that will give them the ability to put software on the edge of
their network that allows all of their traffic to be scanned for
malware and spam. The service, which is slated to be available this winter, will also include Web content control functionality.
"We have an upcoming offering that will allow the communication
service provider to have a cloud-based, device-agnostic mobile security
solution that they can provide to their enterprise customers which
would give their enterprise customers a higher quality of experience
and more security," DePaoli said.
"Symantec's mission is to secure people and information through
identity, protection and context, and our broad approach to mobile
security and management is a key extension of protection for all of our
customers," said Francis deSouza, senior vice president of
the Enterprise Security Group at Symantec, in a statement. "By
providing mobile security and management for smart devices, we're
making it easier for enterprises to allow their employees to use their
device of choice without putting corporate data at risk."
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