Protecting businesses from increased web attacks via smartphone is set to be a major security issue in 2010, says Websense New Zealand manager Chris Barton.

The hacking of smartphones has started to hit a chord this year, but this trend is set to grow with increased adoption of smartphones for business – and Barton believes businesses will need to find the best way to protect against such attacks.

“From a business perspective, people look to secure phones by securing the phone,” he says. “But with large deployments of smartphones in business, it can be hard to manage each individual phone.”

Barton believes the best solution, in terms of economics, is to look at protecting smartphones by securing the delivery method – either via email or the net.

With the increasing trend of social media being used to deliver malicious code, web security for smartphones is an area set to be a major issue for most companies in the new year, he says.