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Computer Viruses Getting Biologic Characteristics

Stories such as the one in Network World about how a new type of proof-of-concept computer virus can pass from a PC to a mobile computer device and delete files are very interesting.  The anti-virus vendors seem skeptical.  This is semi-deja vu.  A few years ago when the use of mobile computing devices was still in its infancy I read an article in which one of the anti-virus vendors, I thought it was McAfee, said someday it would be possible to get a computer virus just by walking past an infected wireless computer or smartphone with your wireless computing device.  I spent too long googling to try and find this article tonight...exasperating!  If any of you find it, please let me know! 

However, seems like this possibility has been discussed for a few years now, and appears that someday all computing devices will be wireless, and thus capable of communicating easily with each other, via one route or another, won't they?  The use of wireless in business is increasing daily.  A 2005 study reported 93.5% of responding companies used wireless somewhere within their organization, and 48% of the employees had access to use wireless technology.   

I'm certainly not a computer virus guru, but based upon programming and wireless concepts, the threat of these kind of virtual air-born viruses make sense.  I would be interested in seeing how many viruses that exist today started out as "proof of concept" viruses...basically didn't they all?   Seems that the potential for this new concept virus called Crossover is being downplayed by the anti-virus software vendors who cannot get their hands on the code from MARA.

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Rebecca Herold's Bio:

Rebecca Herold,CISSP, CIPP, CISM, CISA, FLMI, has been providing information security, privacy and regulatory assistance and services to organizations from a wide range of industries for over 18 years. Rebecca was instrumental in building the information security and privacy program while at Principal Financial Group, which was awarded the CSI Information Security Program of the Year Award in 1998. IT Security ranked Rebecca as one of the top 59 IT security influencers, and Computerworld put Rebecca their list of the 25 top privacy experts and on their list of the 9 best privacy consulting firms. Rebecca has been CPO for two consulting organizations, and has had her own information privacy, security and compliance business since 2004. Rebecca has written chapters for several books, dozens of articles, and has been writing a monthly privacy column for the CSI Alert newsletter since the beginning of 2001, and is working on her 11th book. Some of her other books include The Privacy Papers, Managing an Information Security and Privacy Awareness and Training Program, The Definitive Guide to Security Inside the Perimeter (Realtime Publishers), The Shortcut Guide to Improving IT Service Support through ITIL (Realtime Publishers), and The Practical Guide to HIPAA Privacy and Security Compliance. In addition, Rebecca is the leader of The Realtime IT Compliance Community where she posts to her IT Compliance weblog. You can contact Rebecca at: rebecca_herold@realtimepublishers.net.