When I was a kid I played cops and robbers (or some form of good guy vs. bad guy) with my little brother. Funny thing is now I do the same for a living; well, kind of. I work for a security company and try to offer our partners the products they need to keep their customers protected. OK, guess you could call me a cyber arms dealer for the good guys.
And yes, that would make you a member of a specially trained Cyber S.W.A.T. team.
At this point you are thinking: “Cool I never thought of myself like that before. Let’s go kick some cyber butt.” Or you are thinking, “Man this is pretty corny.”
But in reality, the Cyber S.W.A.T. theme is not too far from the truth. One prime example: In the UK, the newly formed Police Central e-crime Unit (PCeU) made their first arrest in April 2009. Funny that cops who are famous for not carrying guns continue to bring down criminals without guns.
Evolving Threats
As a VAR, how can you offer your customers the best form of protection and service in an ever changing world of cyber crime?
First, let’s look at the facts. Currently we are seeing about 1,000 new malware samples per hour. To put this into context, in 1988 we saw a little over 1,700 in the entire year.
Traditionally we would use pattern files to address those new threats. But with this growth rate nobody would be able to keep up with the pattern file deployments internally and the pattern files would take up over 1GB of space on the desktop each year.
Win-Win: The Cloud and Servers
Ultimately, protection needs to move to the cloud. This will give us an ability to offer protection automatically without needing to deploy pattern files. All customers would be protected at the same time, potentially within minutes when a threat is detected. For a great article which speaks to the increase in malware threats, visit here.
The location of security technology is changing, too. As you may be painfully aware, security software can tax a system and slow it down considerably. By moving much of the security technology off the desktop on to the server, system impact can be minimized and scans will be faster and less invasive without sacrificing protection.
You may ask how the PC will be protected if most of the security technology is located on the server. First, if the PC is off-line, it is much safer than being online, because almost all threats come from the web. The other threat would come from USB drives, but by simply blocking executables from automatically running when inserted we can keep off line PCs safe.
These are just a few of the dramatic changes the security industry is undergoing. In an industry that is evolving at the speed of light, we all need to find the best ways to protect ourselves and our customers from threats.
Now, go get your virtual cap gun and help your customers stay protected.
TJ Alldridge is product marketing manager for Small and Medium Business at Trend Micro. Guest blog entries such as this one are contributed on a monthly basis as part of The VAR Guy’s 2009 sponsorship program.
I agree completely. I must also note, that Prevx was the first to do this back in 2004/2005.
The traditional model for malware detection has been broken for a long time now. White listing, heuristics, and cloud resources are the logical way to fight malware and other similar threats today.
Hey Bob: Good to have your perspective but a quick question – do you work for Prevx? Are you a Prevx partner? Just want to make sure our readers understand how you formed your views. Thanks.
-jp
No, I don’t work for Prevx.
I am a reseller with my own shop, providing support for small businesses and individuals.
I needed security software that scanned quickly and effectively, and something I could push to clients that provided comprehensive support for both “viruses” and “spyware”. Back in 2004, you had to get an entire “suite” of products that consumed lots of memory and CPU cycles.
My business was in a rural area, and most people had older machines. The big name security companies killed these machines. AVG hadn’t yet integrated Ewido into their AV product. Using 2 or 3 different products to keep a customer’s machine clean just doesn’t work with the “average joe”. Tech users seem for forget this.
Prevx was an all in one program, that focused on ease of use. The less it bugged the end user, the better. That worked well with my customer base. The cloud definitions made sure they were always up to date. This was another chronic problem with my users. Canceling the updates because they were busy doing something, and the update was slowing things down. They’d also cancel the scans. And then they’d turn their PCs off whenever they weren’t being used. Updates and scans were hard to keep consistent. You, as a shop, don’t own the machines. You can’t force scans and updates. Prevx did one scan in the beginning, and only scanned new stuff coming in, eliminating the need to have daily scans. Customers loved this method.
I wasn’t much of a fan of CSI, and 2.0 was unstable, but Edge and Prevx 3.0 are products that really show off the benefits of the cloud. Their earlier products just had a community database with frills.
I guess my whole thing is, it ticks me off to see a company demonstrate true innovation, and then watch them get ignored and ridiculed because they didn’t play by the same rules as everyone else, or because they aren’t a known brand.
Yes, their website and marketing approach on it are a bit on the spammy side. They really aren’t helping themselves.
However, if you take a really close look at Prevx, and understand what it’s trying to do, it’s really quite ground breaking. Unfortunately, they do not make this information easy to find for the general public.
Bob,
It appears that you are a satisfied reseller of Prevx. I would like to ask you to try Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security 6.0. I think you will find it much faster than it was when you tested it in 2004, with less impact on the systems. Trend Micro has made huge improvements on the memory usage since then, by implementing a cloud client architecture which scans and blocks threats before they can reach the network/customer.
In addition to the lighter memory usage, increased protection, and established brand name. Trend Micro also offer all of our resellers access to Worry-Free Remote Manager, a web based management console you can use to view all of your Worry-Free Business Security customers from one console. This gives you the ability to remotely monitor, deploy commands and get graphical reports. This is a FREE download for all of our resellers.
If you would like an NFR of Worry-Free Business Security 6.0 all you have to do is enroll in the Trend Micro partner program and you will have access to all of our products including Worry-Free Remote Manager. Give it a shot what’s it going to hurt?
Bravo for Bob—- I just uninstalled another Trend Micro program because it could not repair the customer’s computer. Problem solved after installing prevx 3.0