Broadcom (News - Alert) recently announced the StrataGX BCM58522 series, a processor SoC designed for business 5G Wi-Fi access points. In addition to 5G compatibility, the new chip is designed especially for bring your own device (BYOD) environments and performs faster while using much less power. Production of the chip is expected to start near the end of 2013.

Security has always been a major concern for IT managers, but recent developments, such as the popularity of BYOD and the increase in malware attacks, have made security top priority.

A Cisco (News - Alert) partner survey, BYOD Insights 2013, found that nine out of 10 American employees used their smartphone for work at least once a week, but 40 percent do not password protect these phones and 51 percent access unsecured networks. A 2012 security report by NQ Mobile shows that malware attacks on Android (News - Alert) devices grew by an alarming rate in 2012. Over 65,000 types of malware were discovered; nearly three times the 2011 total of 25,000, affecting over 32 million Android devices.

Not only has the number of malware types increased sharply, but the opportunity for such attacks to spread has too. At the beginning of 2012, there were 300 million Android devices. That total is expected to more than double to 798 million by the end of 2013, according to an ABI Research (News - Alert) study.

In response to these security issues, integrated hardware cryptographic accelerators will be part of new StrataGX chips.

The BCM58522 Series is also designed to meet the growing demand for 5G Wi-Fi running at 1 Gbps. Older networks struggle to handle traffic increasingly made up of resource consuming content such as video. The BCM58522 has 10 times more processing capacity but consumes 80 percent less power compared to the previous hardware release.

On paper, it would appear that 5G solutions like the BCM58522 Series addresses many of the concerns that IT departments have about performance and security, but the magnitude of potential problems is troubling. With malware growing at an alarming rate and the number of smartphone users increasing rapidly, it remains to be seen whether or not hardware like the BCM58522 slows down the attacks or gets overwhelmed by them.