Leader: Can security hype ever be justified?

There's a lot being written about mobile phone viruses at the moment, some of it warning of a growing threat, some of it warning of serious over-hyping of the problem.

A lone voice in the 'serious threat' camp is the only security company to be offering a widely available product protecting users against the problem of mobile malware.

Few other security companies are preparing such products because few see it as a credible enough threat to protect against, or market products on the back of.

But Finnish security firm F-Secure refuses to bend on the issue of mobile phone viruses posing a serious problem, and claims it is building momentum behind the issue now in the hope of catching it early and enabling consumers to have defences in place come the day it does become a credible threat.

F-Secure argues this approach isn't hype but is responsible forward planning.

Critics of such a tactic would counter that F-Secure, in publicising what is currently something of a non-issue, is guilty of creating a market for its new product through hype rather than necessity.

Certainly the company has been carving out this niche for itself and banging the drum for mobile phone viruses for some time now - and including almost any murmur of a sighting on its corporate blog.

The actual numbers certainly suggest instances of genuine mobile phone virus infection are so few and far between as to leave most experts unable to even acknowledge them as a threat rather than a freak occurrence - such as being struck by lightning or killed by a falling piano.

As such many would argue the odds of being struck with a mobile phone virus are so infinitesimally small, currently, that it's really not worth investment in guarding against it.

But many also agree it will one day be a problem - just not now.

F-Secure denies there is any over-hyping at play here but it is clear the company is certainly investing a disproportionate amount of effort into forcing the issue into the public domain, given the scale of the threat.

But it says that may be what is necessary to stop mobile phones falling prey in the same way Windows PCs have, where the issue of malware was only really addressed once it had become a serious problem.

F-Secure argues it is going big on the problem today so it doesn't become a big problem tomorrow.

It's a fair argument, and one the company's critics might find easier to swallow if there wasn't also a business benefit to talking up the scale of threats while you're preparing a product for market and while you're pushing that product out into the market.