Indian firm makes 1st cellphone virus scan

Quick Heal, Indias leading anti-virus solution providers, on Thursday launched PC2Mobile Scan -the world's first mobile phone virus scan in Kerala.

Addressing newsmen here, Quick Heals Director and Chief Technology Officer Sanjay Katkar, said, "Today lots of mobile phones are left unprotected because of lack of awareness and unavailability of appropriate security product. One can find few anti-virus products from multinational companies that are available for certain mobile phone models mostly higher end mobile phones and PDAs. There are lots of mobile phone models for which there is no anti-virus protection available. Using the PC2Moblie Scan Technology one can easily find out if the mobile phone had any virus infection."

The mobile can be connected to the PC or laptop using USB Cable and scan the phone from Quick Heal Total Security 2010 installed on the PC', he said.

If the PC or laptop is Bluetooth enabled and if the mobile phone is Bluetooth enabled, then the mobile phone can also be scanned over Bluetooth connection.

Currently, Quick Heal has more than 30 per cent market share in Indian Anti Virus Market, he said. Quick Heals Vice president - Sales & Marketing, Abhijit Jorvekar said Smart phones are going to pose greater security risk to corporations as these phones are given abilities to access corporate networks in real time just as laptops have been doing it.

This presents hackers and cyber criminals with wider opportunity to use smart phones to compromise corporate network and access sensitive data.

This is going to be a big challenge for corporate security in coming days. PC2Moblie scan feature detects all mobile platform viruses (platforms like Symbian OS, Windows Moblie OS and other Linux based mobile OS) and supports scanning of mobile phone based on Symbian operating system, Windows Operating System and also supports proprietary mobile firmware making it the only single product that supports virus scanning for variety of makes of mobile phones available from vendors such as Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, LG, Panasonic, Motorola, O2, IMate, HP, HTC and Siemens.