Anti-virus Solutions from SECURE COMPUTING®

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Stopping Known and Unknown Virus Attacks

Computer viruses have evolved considerably since the early days. While the first wave of virus attacks were designed often just to annoy, or to promote a message of some sort, viruses now are designed to cause as much damage as possible, and very often, to reap ill-gotten financial benefit from the victim. Anti-virus software, too, must evolve to keep up with the more sophisticated nature of attacks.

The first wave of anti-virus technology used signature databases, which categorized known viruses and compared incoming traffic against those databases. The primary method of acquiring viruses was first through sharing of floppy disks, and later, through email attachments. Later anti-virus technology however, had to adapt to new techniques used by attackers. Viruses are also now contained in infected web sites and can penetrate your network in a "drive-by" attack. A virus may be tied to active code that downloads onto your PC immediately when you view a particular infected web site. As such, the traditional methods of anti-virus prevention became inadequate very quickly.

Today, anti-virus technology requires a much more comprehensive approach that incorporates multiple techniques. URL filtering, for example, is not specifically an anti-virus technology, but its use prevents the entry of many viruses into the network, by preventing access to infected web sites. In addition, the signature database method of anti-virus prevention is useful, but limited. Because by design, it catches only viruses that are known and have already been categorized, the signature method cannot detect or prevent viruses that are not yet known.

Secure Computing delivers anti-virus in-depth protection against a multitude of blended threats at the gateway, while offering high-speed performance through the innovative Anti-virus PreScan™ technology. The Webwasher anti-virus solution is the only one on the market with the PreScan technology, including up to three anti-malware engines to scan Web and email traffic to fulfill the most rigorous security requirements. Through the combination of technologies, including the TrustedSource® reputation engine, Secure Computing prevents zero-day virus attacks.

For more information on Secure Computing's messaging Anti-virus solutions and
Web gateway Anti-virus solutions, please visit our Anti-virus pages.