Nokia and IBM plan to work together to provide secured business applications on advanced mobile handsets targeted at the enterprise market. IBM Global Services will act as a system integrator of Nokia's Mobile VPN solution for Symbian OS-based mobile handsets worldwide.

According to the companies, Nokia's Mobile VPN solution consists of Nokia Security Service Manager (NSSM) and Nokia Mobile VPN Client for secure over-the-air provisioning of Mobile VPN client software and policies for Nokia's Symbian OS-based mobile handsets.

The Nokia Mobile VPN Client is a standards-based IPSec VPN client supporting both legacy and PKI authentication. NSSM is an open standard, over-the-air provisioning system for mobile security applications, such as the Nokia Mobile VPN Client and for third party applications in the future.

IBM Global Services said security is of utmost concern to its customers. John Kirby, Vice President, Global, Wireless e-business Services, IBM, said "by combining IBM Global Services expertise with Nokia's mobile security offerings, we can now offer customers new levels of VPN security. Over-the-air provisioning systems offer significant cost savings by reducing the maintenance work involved in installation of VPN clients and updating of security policies."