The volume and sophistication of malware is skyrocketing and traditional antivirus approaches are struggling to keep up. Historically, the approach to dealing with the growing quantity and complexity of malware has been to build a better antivirus “mousetrap”, without any shift in the underlying management model for vetting change in endpoint environments. The result is has been bloated anti-malware technology with ineffective protection and abysmal performance. This increase endpoint total cost of ownership due to increased strain on IT resources and reduced end-user productivity, which putts further pressure on already flat or reduced IT budgets.
Gartner recently stated “Get more resilient, because you will be attacked”!
Between 207 and 2010, the number of threats security researchers found needing new AV signatures has risen from 480,000 per month to a bout 1,8 million per month. Not only has the volume increased rapidly, but so has the sophistication of attacks. Much of the malware is now designed by financially motivated criminal syndicates, which develop malicious code ti bypass antivirus defense and to target specific organizations.
“Yet it’s not just PCs that IT service and support staff must worry about. From IP security cameras and door readers, through to mobiles, tablets and wearable technologies, there is a proliferation of devices capable of introducing new threats to the corporate network”, writes Benjamin De Rose, SEMEA Sales Director at HEAT Software. “In the Middle East, the demand for endpoint security is massively growing. More than 30% of our revenues of the Southern region (includes France, Benelux, Middle East and South Africa) should come from the Middle East. And it’s increasing every day. We dedicate more efforts and resources to the Middle East region to answer the growing needs of our clients” continues Benjamin De Rose.
Today’s security threat landscape is ever evolving multifaceted and increasingly complex. However, 99% of the risks can still be eliminated by regularly and consistently applying simple security precautions? Specific strategies can then be deployed to detect, respond and militate against impact of more sophisticated attacks.
A layered approach
For HEAT Software, the most effective defense has many layers but begins with intelligent whitelisting. This is an approach to application control which begins with a local list of approved software applications, alongside a trust engine that lets you define criteria for trusted applications; For example, you can specify trusted publishers, updaters, paths or locations. It is also lets you maintain a blacklist of denied applications that for security, productivity or even bandwidth usage reasons users are unable to introduce in your environment.
