Anti-virus digital crusader McAfee has formed a partnership with mobile phone feature management solutions provider Bitfone to enable security protection for mobile phones over the air.

Bitfone's solutions are found in phones made and sold by such venerable names as Motorola, LGE, SK Telecom, Sony Ericsson, QUALCOMM and UTStarcom.

Here's how this thing will work. Bitfone will add an embedded McAfee scanning engine to its device management solution. With this added functionality in place, you'll have a mobile client-server set-up that will let cell phone operators prevent, detect and if necessary, recover from viruses, spyware, worms and auto-dialers that attack their networks.

Both on the mobile sys-admin and individual phone-diagnostic level, the McAfee component will be loaded for action. It will enable the Bitfone platform to perform remote diagnostics, scheduled updates to virus definition files, and even purge and reset an individual subscriber's handset that may have eluded the safety net.

As cellular networks get faster, viruses will propogate. Or, attempt to. That's why this solution will take off.