“A lot of the new applications coming into the market are developed by small firms, and they are not looking into the security implications of some of their applications,” Mr. Chandrasekaran said. “On one hand, people view security as decreasing the usability of the application. Plus, if you’re a start-up, you have less money to spend and probably want to spend it on adding features to your application rather than security.”

Several free security applications are available for mobile phones. The beta version of Norton Mobile Security allows users to lock and erase all data from their phone remotely by text message so it cannot be used if lost, and users can scan for malware. Lookout Mobile Security offers a free application to scan phones for malware, back up and restore data online and use GPS to locate the phone.

Mr. Chandrasekaran said he felt that people had not yet embraced these security applications.

“The main problem is that the consumer doesn’t yet see the value in them. I think there is a general lack of information and awareness, at least on the part of private consumers. Corporates are more aware of the issues,” he said.

The number of malware problems with mobile phones has been limited. In its 2010 report, F-Secure Labs said the number of mobile malwares, about 500 groups of malware and their variants, had not increased drastically last year, but it pointed to worrying developments. Some applications made for the Google Android operating system have posed as games while spying on users; others have posed as banking applications but had no connection to a bank. The company predicted the assault would get worse this year.

The problem is not limited to rogue applications. Poor protection in popular shopping and social media applications has made user data easily available.