Computer Associates to deliver antivirus for the palm OS platform

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) has become the first antivirus developer to deliver a working production version of its software for Palm Powered handheld computers.

InoculateIT for the Palm OS platform is immediately available from the CA Web site at http://www.ca.com/products/inoculateit/palm.htm. It provides immediate and complete protection against all current known malicious attacks targeted at the Palm OS platform, including PalmOS.Liberty.A, PalmOS.Phage.A and PalmOS.Vapor A.

For a limited time, the download is available at no cost.

Any electronic platform can be susceptible to the hackers who create viruses. But the usage model for a PC is very different from that of a handheld, and so is the operating system. The Palm OS is much less complicated than a PC operating system and there are safeguards built into the Palm OS to protect user data on many levels. This makes Palm handhelds by nature more secure from suffering damage from viruses. As of today, viruses and other malicious software have not posed a major threat to the broad base of Palm users. CA believes that as handhelds and other devices like phones, pagers, even cars become increasingly connected -- through wireless or wireline connections to the Internet and to email -- the threat of malicious software will naturally become greater than it is today.

InoculateIT is designed for use on handheld computers running PalmOS V3.0 or later, including most Palm III, Palm V, and Palm VII series handhelds, Palm m100 handheld, Handspring Visor and Handspring Visor Deluxe.

"The undesirable elements of the cracker community continue to target new platforms and applications in an attempt to spread their havoc further afield. This year we have observed a developing atmosphere of fear among some eCommerce platform users, driven by security concerns including virus attacks," said Simon Perry, CA`s vice president of security solutions. "This has made the protection of handheld platforms and the allaying of those fears a top priority for our security researchers."

InoculateIT combines an extremely small footprint, a fully functional scanning engine, and CA`s award-winning InoculateIT antivirus solution to provide Palm Powered handheld users with total protection against current and future virus attacks. Those awards include the VB100% award - which InoculateIT won for an unparalleled 19th time -- in recognition of its superior performance among antivirus solutions.

The InoculateIT family is part of the world ` s leading eBusiness Security solution, eTrust- providing a powerful, comprehensive and integrated solution for building, deploying and securing eBusiness. eTrust enables eBusiness by safeguarding all mission-critical resources, from the browser to the mainframe.