McAfee offers handheld virus protection

McAfee has followed antivirus rival Symantec's lead with the release of an antivirus product for wireless handheld PCs.

Although there are currently no viruses written specifically for handheld platforms, experts have warned that as the popularity of these types of devices continues to grow, so does the risk of virus infection.

At the PC Expo show in New York this week, McAfee said its Wireless Security Center software protects devices running the Palm operating system, Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system and Psion's Epoc operating system.

Included in the product are VirusScan for handhelds, which scans and eliminates viruses before they have the opportunity to infect the PC and spread through a network; Virus Information Broadcast, which delivers information about virus prevalence and payload; and Software Matchmaker, which identifies the latest available antivirus software.

Srivats Sampath, president and chief executive of McAfee.com, said: "As wireless devices become more prevalent and we start to use them to access our personal digital assets, like our checking accounts, data files, email and calendaring, we're likely to see an increasing vulnerability to being infected by viruses.

"It's clear that people using unprotected handheld and wireless devices on the internet are very susceptible."

There are some 10 million users of handheld devices today, according to Sampath, and analyst IDC predicts that the number will increase 10 fold by 2003, surpassing the number of desktop PCs sold every year.