Symantec, McAfee target iPhone for new products
Security companies Symantec and McAfee will be the latest big-name developers to make products for Apple's iPhone, as the two look to cash in on the popularity of the device.
Speaking to Reuters, McAfee CEO Dave DeWalt said his company is developing security software for the iPhone, though no other details on the product were provided. DeWalt also said the company is working on a "much more comprehensive suite for the Apple family."
Symantec is throwing its hat into the iPhone ring too, but it won't be developing traditional security software. Instead, Symantec is looking at a backup service that would give people access to files stored on their computers or on the Web.
The service sounds a bit like Apple's own MobileMe service, which stores data in the cloud. But it's unclear whether Symantec will offer the same type of data syncing available from Apple.
Symantec Senior Vice President Rowan Trollope told Reuters that his company has no immediate plans to introduce security products for the iPhone.
Neither company gave a time frame for the release of products.
Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in various positions at Macworld. Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to record music using a Macintosh. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. He currently runs The Loop. You can follow him on Twitter @jdalrymple. 
Congrats Jim on your first C|Net article!
The article states: "Symantec is looking at a backup service that would give people access to files stored on their computers or on the Web." This implies that they will be providing a complementary service to MobileMe, not an alternative.
FWIW, much of what's available to the iPhone from MobileMe is available for free from Google and other services by way of mimicking exchange server. I do have MobileMe and love it for other reasons, but I no longer use the MM calendar. Instead, I use Google Calendar. I can share calendars amongst friends and subscribe to them and even make updates right from the iPhone Calendar application. I do use the email and contacts functionality within MobileMe, but these are supported via Google for free...
not to mention the SDK is so restricting I'm sure it Won't allow File scans too
Eitherway when it comes to security it's better to stay away for both Symantec and Mcafee
their software is nothing but crapware in my book !
Mcafee making backup software ! Lol!
Speaking generally about overall security and not limiting myself to viruses and trojans, any online computer can theoretically be vulnerable. And your iPhone does have a public IP address and therefore can be targeted from anywhere in the world. Luckily scanning shows the service ports are not only closed but stealthed (haven't had my iPhone scanned above port 1055 yet). Not sure if this holds up for iPhone OS version 3 when it comes out with it's notification services nor the various apps you can obtain for a jail broken iPhone (Apple screens normal apps so that shouldn't be an issue if you don't jail break). Phones have been found to be vulnerable via Blue Tooth attacks but I haven't heard much about this lately and Apple seems to hate Flash so that path of infection is closed. Safari has proven vulnerable but I don't know if the Hack To Own 'vulnerabilities' translate to an iPhone.
My gut reaction is that I'm not worried about viruses. You're more vulnerable to someone grabbing your iPhone or you losing it and having someone break into it. If you've used Maps to get back home from somewhere, you might have a bookmark with your home address on your phone. And there are proven methods to extract iPhone data even if you've used the password setting. I'd much rather have encryption against a real threat than maleware protection against a theoretical threat.
- by CaptainCosmic May 18, 2009 4:32 PM PDT
- As soon as the AV market is gone, these guys are also and that time is coming very soon. There is zero need for what they are proposing and I expect it's vaporware anyway. This kind of news is just to keep investors happy with fluff (cloud computing, saas, virtualization, iphone, blah blah.)
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