The good news is that at least partial solutions for common BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Palm OS handhelds are available on the market today. Gold cited products from Sybase Inc., Credant Technologies Inc. and Pointsec Mobile Technologies Inc. as examples.

At the FOSE conference, Riva Networks Inc. and Trust Digital were showing security offerings for Palm devices. TealLock from TealPoint Software has also become popular for software-level Palm password protection and is available in an enterprise edition with centralized controls for mobile devices.

None of these are total solutions, Gold said, but some protection is a lot better than none.

"I advise my clients to do something soon, within the next 12 months," he warned. "I would advise them to start with an antivirus and personal firewall to protect their devices from viruses that will likely start showing up on the network within that time, and to install at least password locking if not data-level encryption as well on all devices that can access sensitive data."

Gold has published a white paper on the subject of mobile systems security and compliance, available through his Web site (http://www.jgoldassociates.com/Whitepaper_Request.html) and on Computerworld's White Papers section (http://www.computerworld.com/action/whitepapers.do?command=viewWhitePaperDetail&contentId=9000899).