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Is there a corporate solution to maintain/update anti-virus software for WinCE devices? The security team is concerned about these devices connecting to the network and are requiring AV. A subquestion might be: is this a credible risk?

I did find Microsoft's SMS 2003 Device Management feature pack, but I don't think it supports any AV management.

Richard Morgan
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    Do the devices have writable HDs? Most of my WinCE experience is with embedded devices where the HD wasn't normally writable. Nothing stopping it from running a virus, but our devices didn't include IE or other "Internet" software, so they were deemed an insufficient risk to security. – Chris S Sep 08 '10 at 12:54
  • In theory, there is a writable HD, but IE and other Internet software has been removed. Good to know that others think these devices are low risk. Thanks. – Richard Morgan Sep 08 '10 at 13:29

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It's your security team's responsibility to tell you the AV solution they'd like you to use, if they're going to mandate it. That said, Avast! offer a WinCE AV solution if you can't argue them around to a reasonable position, and McAfee may still offer one, too.

Mobile devices generally don't run AV. Ask them what AV is running on the blackberry devices, or smartphones with Wifi.

WinCE has an excellent security track record. It's pretty much baked onto the hardware, runs a mostly seperate architecture to other windows builds, and to my knowledge there's barely any examples, if any, of major WinCE exploits in the wild.

Chris Thorpe
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