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Malicious code has emerged
as the single largest factor for security breaches. According
to the CSI/FBI Survey 2002 more than 94% of the large corporations
have had sizeable downtime and financial losses due to malicious
code attacks. As per the CII-PwC Survey 2002, in India 75%
of the corporates have had serious incidences of malicious
code attacks "forcing them to shut down external connections
to the Internet, resulting in large losses due to downtime
and lost business opportunities".
The recent SQLSlammer attack underlines the fact that businesses
are not taking adequate measures to fortify their IT Infrastructures.
Even those corporates that have implemented the latest anti-virus
protection suffer attacks - raising a fundamental doubt about
the ability of available anti-virus products to provide the
requisite protection.
It is important to realize that an anti-virus software is
only as effective as the last update. Today, the speed of
malicious code proliferation across the Internet is mind-boggling.
In 1990 the Form virus took a year to spread across the Internet,
in 1995 the Concept Macro virus took 2 months, in 1999 Love
Bug took 9 hours, in 2001 Code Red took 2 hours, and Nimda
took a mere 30 minutes to spread. This narrow window has already
paled in comparision to the 10 minutes it took SQLSlammer
to spread across the Internet in Jan 2003.
What this effectively means is that today there is no longer
any window for receiving anti-virus updates. The update has
to be done in 'real time'. This is where conventional anti-virus
software fail. For instance, Norton provides the 'Liveupdate'
facility. Despite the name, this facility only updates your
system on a weekly basis - every Wednesday, and when there
is a major outbreak. What most users don't realize is that
for daily updates, they have to use another utility - 'Intelligent
Updater' which has to be downloaded and installed manually.
Thus, for most users, effectively the update window is 7 days.
Along with 'real time' updates, today there is a critical
need for 'malicious code management' - especially for controlling
outbreaks. To provide 'real time' updates and centralized
malicious code management, a next generation technology is
required. This is where Network Associates*
McAfee ASaP, based on patented Rumour Technology comes in.
ASaP, provides continuous, online and real-time malicious
code, and firewall/IDS protection. It also provides centralized
enterprise-wide malicious code management. Subscribers receive
continuous updates directly from AVERT Labs (world's foremost
anti-virus Lab which discovered Code Red and Nimda), through
SecureSynergy's NOC in Mumbai. The subscribers also receive
comprehensive malicious-code management reports.
The ASaP model is particularly significant for mobile users.
They receive continuous updates as soon as they connect to
the Internet, wherever they are in the world.
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