Elisa and F-Secure Corporation today announced that Elisa, as the first mobile operator in the world, will start offering wireless anti-virus services to its smartphone customers.
Based on the F-Secure Mobile Anti-Virus(tm) service solution, the new service is the first commercial mobile anti-virus service offered through a mobile operator. Elisa smartphone users can download the anti-virus client over the air directly to the phone and will have a free one-month test period of the anti-virus update service. After the trial period, the users
can purchase continuation to the service directly from the phone. The service is charged in the subscriber’s invoice.
F-Secure Mobile Anti-Virus is the most comprehensive solution available for protecting smartphones against harmful content, from undesired messages to malfunctioning applications. It provides real-time, on-device protection and automatic over-the-air anti-virus updates through a patented SMS update
mechanism and HTTPS connections.
“Security is a key concern for Elisa. We want to be leaders in providing new, advanced services for the smartphone users in our network. By offering our customers an automatic anti-virus solution, we can ensure the fastest possible protection for their devices when new harmful content emerges. FSecure, as our long-term security partner and the leading provider of
mobile content security solutions, was a natural choice to operate the antivirus service for us,” said Veli-Matti Mattila, President and CEO of Elisa.
“Mobile operators are the ideal partner for us in the distribution of security services to smartphone users. We are delighted that Elisa shares our view and is now ready to expand our security cooperation to mobile services. We look forward to developing the mobile security services further together with Elisa to guarantee the most secure mobile environment for
Elisa customers also in the future,” said Risto Siilasmaa, President and CEO of F-Secure Corporation.
Viruses are starting to emerge for handheld devices. The first mobile phone virus, a worm named Cabir running in Symbian OS mobile phones, was discovered on June 14th, and the first Pocket PC virus appeared in July. Although these viruses have caused only a minor threat, they clearly show that mobile devices have become a target for virus writers. The security challenges in the mobile environment are similar to the problems we have encountered in the PC world. Phone users should be careful when installing new software and downloading applications over the Internet. Extra caution should be used when the software comes from an unknown source.
The best way to protect a smartphone against harmful content is to install automated anti-virus software to the phone. This is also the only way to get full protection against viruses that try to enter the phone for example over Bluetooth or infrared connections.
The F-Secure Mobile Anti-Virus service is available to Elisa users through Elisa WAP services on October 28th. In the beginning, the service is offered to the users of Nokia 3650, 3660, N-Gage, 6600, 7610 and 6670 smartphones. Later, the service will be expanded to support also other smartphones as
well as new distribution and billing models.