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Shane Abrahams

Vendors are adding functions to their suites or bundling applications to counter wave of malicious code

NEW SECURITY THREATS are leading makers of anti-virus software to rush to expand the scope of their products to provide a complete solution. But vendors are taking different approaches to the problem.

Anti-virus software vendor, McAfee said that in the first three months of the year it identified more than 1,000 new attacks aimed at taking advantage of vulnerabilities in software.

McAfee tracks new threats through McAfee AVERT, the company's Anti-virus and Vulnerability Emergency Response Team.

McAfee AVERT vice-president Vincent Gullotto said: 'Although we saw a steady decline in the rate of viruses produced from 2000 to 2004, down to a 5 per cent year-on-year growth, we've seen a 20 per cent increase of malware-related threats between 2004 and 2005 and anticipate that these numbers will stay at the higher rate of growth for the immediate future.

'In the first quarter of 2005, the rise in unwanted programs has greatly surpassed that of the first quarter of 2004.'

To limit the impact of malicious software, the latest version of McAfee's flagship application has built-in firewall capabilities.

McAfee Asia-Pacific marketing director Allan Bell said: 'To protect people today you need more than anti-virus ... So some of the things that were optional a few years ago are required today.'

Mr Bell said for a company looking to ensure information security a minimum solution would include anti-virus, anti-spyware, some firewall capabilities and IP filtering of a company's Web servers.

Mr Bell said this trend was part of an evolution away from basic anti-virus software.

McAfee is adding these extra functions into its anti-virus software to offer one comprehensive solution.

However, other vendors bundled different security applications together to create what Symantec senior director Asia-Pacific David Sykes called integrated solutions.

In these cases, anti-virus is just one component in a suite of security applications packaged in the same way that Microsoft combined different productivity tools in Microsoft Office.

Mr Sykes warned that while businesses were more aware of security issues, some market segments were more willing to tackle the problem than others.

Banks and financial services companies were very concerned, while manufacturers often seemed  not to care.

A company's size also had a bearing on its ability to tackle security.

Mr Sykes said smaller companies varied in their ability to address security issues; often cost and complexity were the key factors.

He said the job of companies such as Symantec was to offer small enterprises a cost-effective solution.

Mr Bell doubted that integrated solutions were the answer for companies looking for a complete security solution.

He said: 'Bundling, the way many organisations are doing it, they're simply packaging stuff together.'

This amounted to no more than a selling technique, he added.

McAfee's approach was to add the functions of other applications such as a firewall and anti-spyware into its anti-virus software.

Mr Bell said this approach was easier for corporate customers to manage because it meant only one application would need to be updated to protect against new threats.

Similarly, it could be hard to keep track of  all the patches that needed to be installed to address newly discovered vulnerabilities in operating systems and other software.

'Its not simply about putting these things into people's machines,' he said.

Mr Bell said many larger companies would not simply install a patch as soon as it was released. They would spend time testing the patch to ensure it was compatible with their systems.

Mr Bell recommended prioritising the installation of new patches to make sure critical areas were addressed first. For instance, patching a server was more important than patching a stand-alone PC used by the receptionist.

To help customers get the better of writers of malicious code, Mr Bell said anti-virus software vendors were becoming more proactive in their approach. Consequently, rather than waiting for an attack to be launched at a particular software vulnerability, they worked to prevent or at least contain an attack before it was launched.

However, anti-virus will probably remain a key component of any company's security solution.

There are now close to 17,500 documented viruses and worms targeting the Windows operating system.

And the number keeps growing. In the last six months of last year, Symantec documented more than 7,360 new virus and worm variants, a 64 per cent increase over the first half of last year.

Most of the malicious code documented during the period were variants of the Netsky, MyDoom and Beagle worms.

Malicious code that exposed confidential information made up 54 per cent of the top 50 malicious code samples, up from 44 per cent in the previous six months.

Similarly, the growth in non-malicious threats, which McAfee refers to as potentially unwanted programs, or PUPs, is continuing.

Adware, programs that cause unwanted pop-up ads to appear even when the computer is not online, are the most common type of PUP.

The company expects PUPs to continue to spread, with 1.5 million users, or 30 per cent of the more than 5 million users of its VirusScan On-line service, reporting the presence of adware.

Of those reported, each machine had an average of 3 adware programs installed.



Complete solutions best way forward as new threats arise