``Do Hackers Pose a Threat to Smart Phones?''

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that malware for smart phones (e.g., Windows CE- and Symbian-based devices, and Blackberries) is real and on the rise.

The article quotes states that the economics of cell phone malware doesn’t look so good for malware-writers because of the lack of a dominant hardware platform. Still, the mobile segment of the anti-malware market seems to be developing, and proprietors of phone platforms are somewhat famously exerting control over which third-party applications can be installed. (For a synopsis, see the excerpt from Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It on the book’s home page.

But, at the same time, the points out that mobile devices present a broader range of hazards than susceptibility to malware: unrestricted file transfers can poke holes in network security mechanisms that apply to the rest of an enterprise network, and lost devices may contain troves of sensitive information. So organizational policies and practices must complement technical approaches, and there are dimensions of cybersecurity that technical solutions (including platform control) won’t solve.