Intego announces first-ever iPhone malware scanner – really?
Follow up on my previous post on the new security flaw discovered in Apple’s iPhone and iPad – see http://bringyourownit.com/2011/07/07/oops-there-is-a-bug-in-my-apple/
With impeccable timing, this morning Intego announded the availability of the “first-ever iPhone malware scanner”. Sure enough I went to the Apple Store and downloaded the VirusBarrier app in my iPhone and iPad. My test drive impressions: the app still leaves to the end user the responsibility to check the attachments rather than enforcing it. It is quite clunky and may provide a false sense of security: if you tap the attachment and then release the finger a little too early, you’ll end up opening up the attachment instead of scanning it(!) Probably safer – and cheaper – not to open pdf attachment in general. And as any other consumer app, there is no centralized IT management whatsoever: no reporting and no policy enforcement. One more thing: Apple is supposedly working with Adobe to address this vulnerability and will provide an update soon. At that point this app may become simply useless … but I guess this is one of those situations where “something is better than nothing” …
A few comments from a couple of Trend Micro’s experts:
Mark Bloom, Director – Director Product Marketing @ Trend Micro : “Usage or not, they [Intego] will get a lot of brand awareness out of this…..just for that value, it was worth the development effort.”
Patrick Wheeler, Sr Product Marketing Manager @ Trend Micro : “[… Apple iOS] antimalware matters, which puts us [Trend Micro] at an advantage over MDM-only vendors like MobileIron, Airwatch, and Symantec, and allows us to talk up the differentiation for our own antimalware we get from integration with SPN.”
