Is the smart phone the new laptop?

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By William Jackson
 

Connecting state and local government leaders

By William Jackson

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Professionals eschew the bulky laptop for more portable network devices, and the bad guys are taking notice.

The desktop PC is so 20th century; and the laptop is so last week. Who wants to lug around a laptop when you can put a supercomputer in your pocket?

A recent report from Juniper Networks on malicious mobile threats declared that the smart phone and tablet computer are poised to take over as the work platform of choice. And the bad guys have taken note. 

Related coverage:

Mobile computing ripe for 'catastrophic malware disaster', report states

“Already, mobile malware and exploitation techniques have reached the complexity and capabilities of their counterparts in wired networks,” the Juniper report concluded.

Are handhelds really taking over from laptops? Dan Hoffman, chief mobile security evangelist for Juniper’s Global Threat Center, does not pretend to speak for everybody, but his personal experience indicates they are.

“I can’t think of a five or 10 minute period through the day that I’m awake that I don’t have my phone with me,” he said. During a recent two-day business trip to New York, “I never opened my laptop during that time,” relying instead on his smart phone and an iPad.

He said that he does disconnect while hunting and fishing.

NEXT STORY: Portable retina scanner: From Batman's belt to your hand

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