Robert Lemos of ZDNet News sums up the issues nicely in a recent report. On one side are the antivirus vendors, spending a little of their credibility hyping potential threats. On the other are independent analysts who note the muted nature of attacks so far. There have been only two virus-like attacks on handhelds to date, not counting a couple of incidents specific to smart phones. Liberty Crack was a programming exercise that accidentally escaped into the wild. Phage harbored code that could erase Palm applications, but included no way to replicate itself from Palm to Palm.
What's the worst thing a Palm virus can do? Erase all the information on someone's handheld device? How catastrophic is that, really? If users frequently synchronize their handheld devices, then the remedy is to resync--voilà, they're back in business.
To protect yourself against Palm viruses, take these three steps. First, make sure you keep your regular antivirus program updated. Many can scan the .prc files Palm OS runs to find malicious code.
Of course, that would recover only the operating system and built-in utilities. Users may need to reinstall custom applications separately. So my second piece of advice is to buy a more powerful backup program for your handhelds that can restore all the information on the devices. I use BackupBuddy from Blue Nomad, and it has served me well on the occasions when my trusty old Palm Professional has locked up and required a hard reset.
Could a virus corrupt information on a PDA without erasing it, thereby compromising its value? Probably not without your noticing it, in which case simply delete the corrupted data and proceed with synchronizing as usual.
Just in case, however, my third piece of advice is to back up your desktop clients--and not just those of handheld device users. The desktops of PDA owners, in effect, serve as the backup platforms for the handheld devices. Unlike regular backup media, however, desktop PCs are pretty dynamic, meaning their data and configuration are subject to frequent change. An administrative assistant who momentarily spaces out is far more likely to damage or delete an important document than a virus, handheld or otherwise. Backing up the My Documents folder and certain other crucial folders on all client PCs is a prudent insurance policy against the kind of lost productivity that can ensue after the accidental deletion of a crucial file. Computer Associates' ARCserveIT (see review), Veritas Software's Backup Exec (see review), and Legato Systems' NetWorker are three excellent products for enterprise customers; there are several of others.
If you're budgeting to improve the safety and stability of your organization's infrastructure, apply some dollars not to superfluous handheld antivirus applications, but to client licenses for your company's enterprise backup software.
Is your organization worried about PDA viruses? Let me know in the TalkBack below.
