Bluefire Security announced recently that it has joined Microsoft's Mobility Partner Advisory Council. The company's BlueFire Mobile Firewall Plus application helps protect Windows Mobile-based mobile devices.

BlueFire Mobile Firewall Plus features intrusion prevention, integrity management, encryption, authentication and policy-based enterprise security management features that aim to enable the safe use of mobile and wireless applications.

According to Microsoft, the Mobility Partner Advisory Council was formed to serve as a focused feedback mechanism for Microsoft mobility platform development and to provide new technical, marketing and business development support to companies making significant investments and inroads in the mobility space.

General Security

According to a recent survey by TNS NFO, 74.6 percent of employees that use mobile devices either don't have, or don't know whether they have, any security protection.

Considering that 86 percent of employers knowingly permit the use of these device, it is disturbing that nearly the same number, 83.76 percent, have failed to set usage guidelines, leaving their enterprises and sensitive data vulnerable to malicious code attacks and information theft.

The TNS NFO study also found that consumers store vulnerable confidential information on their devices without adequate protection. For instance, nearly 40 percent of PDAs and smart phones contain credit card numbers, while over 25 percent store incomes. In addition, approximately 19 percent reveal health problems, and love letters reside on around 17 percent of mobile devices.

TNS NFO's findings jive with a recent Gartner report that found essentially the same thing. According to Gartner, one problem with mobile devices is that 90% them lack the proper protection to ward off hackers.

For more on mobile security, read our recent article "Top 10 Items You Shouldn't Allow on Employee PDAs (and what do about it)."