Symantec will now take care of providing security to the mobile devices in the enteprises, it has announced its mobile security and management strategy, and launched three products in this space.

Symantec's mobile strategy focuses on the integration of its mobile security and management solutions to help customers reduce downtime, increase user productivity, improve response time and provide protection and management throughout the mobile device lifecycle -- from provisioning and management to security and eventual device retirement.

"As mobile devices become more sophisticated, provide greater corporate access and store more data, organizations require greater control and management to protect corporate information and ensure user productivity -- all while reducing costs," said Art Gilliland, vice president, Enterprise Security Group, Symantec. "Our mobile strategy is designed to protect and manage data wherever it resides and automate procurement and provisioning, provide ongoing maintenance and protection, and quickly retire the mobile devices if they are lost, damaged, stolen or replaced."

Symantec's mobile management and security strategy follows a lifecycle model, provides integration and aligns with the broad Symantec portfolio. As part of its mobile strategy, Symantec is now offering three new products to help customers mitigate risk, manage complexity, control costs, automate processes and address compliance concerns with efficiency and cost savings.

Symantec Endpoint Protection Mobile Edition 6.0 provides protection for mobile devices against malicious threats and unauthorized access to sensitive corporate information by utilizing award-winning antivirus technology, an advanced firewall, and SMS anti-spam protection. Symantec Endpoint Protection Mobile Edition helps ensure both the protection of the data on the mobile devices and compliance with internal and external security requirements.

Symantec Network Access Control Mobile Edition 6.0 works with Symantec Endpoint Protection Mobile Edition to enforce compliancy with security policies to ensure that only secure, policy-compliant devices can access the network and email on Microsoft Exchange. Symantec Network Access Control Mobile Edition provides client-based integrity checking and centralized alerting of device integrity status. Assessment of host integrity status for mobile devices helps organizations ensure that they are able to consistently enforce IT policy. Centralized logging, reporting, and alerting further enables organizations to proactively monitor the status of managed devices.

Symantec Mobile Management 7.0, which enables over-the-air deployment of applications and updates, improves end user productivity by managing mobile device health, and integrates with Symantec mobile security products to manage and secure mobile devices throughout their lifecycle. Symantec Mobile Management provides remote assistance capabilities, real-time system management, granular software delivery and self repair, and complete visibility into the mobile environment.

Symantec's mobile security and management solutions, are built on the Symantec Management Platform, which provides unified enterprise-class management of desktops, laptops, servers and mobile devices. This enables administrators to centrally define and distribute security policies to mobile devices over-the-air. The Symantec Management Platform also provides product integration to enable unified security and management of mobile devices from a single management console, thus reducing complexity, mitigating risk, and lowering costs. Integration with Symantec LiveUpdate further helps to ensure timely updates of content.

Symantec Endpoint Protection Mobile Edition and Symantec Network Access Control Mobile Edition support Windows Mobile, Windows CE, and Symbian mobile devices while the Symantec Mobile Management solution offers support for Windows Mobile and Windows CE mobile devices. The solutions are now available and can be purchased directly from Symantec or through Symantec's worldwide network of value-added authorized resellers, distributors and systems integrators.