COMMTOUCH SOFTWR LTD (CTCH)

[midastouch017]

Commtouch Closes Early-Hour Vulnerability Gap -- November 29, 2005

"Malware writers have realized that organizations' reliance on signature-based anti-virus products creates a significant window of vulnerability, and are targeting it in various ways"

"The growing effectiveness of malware can be explained by its dynamic nature. Malware writers have realized that organizations' reliance on signature-based anti-virus products creates a significant window of vulnerability, and are targeting it in various ways," said Dan Yachin, IDC's Research Director for EMEA Emerging Technologies. "The problem of signature-based AV solutions lies in their reactive nature. Given their lengthy development cycles, signatures developed against new, rapidly propagating attacks cannot prevent mass infection in the first hours. Emerging technologies such as Commtouch's Zero-Hour Virus Protection could have an important role in mitigating those risks." "With viruses increasingly targeting the early hour window of vulnerability, no security vendor can afford to rely solely on signatures. We believe we have the solution for AV vendors as well as AV integrators," said Oren Drori, director of product marketing at Commtouch.

Commtouch's Zero-Hour solution analyzes massive amounts of email (SMTP) traffic in real-time, using data collected at different key points over the Internet to achieve a representative sample of worldwide traffic. In a fully automated process, it analyzes patterns of malware outbreaks, to identify new outbreaks as soon as they are distributed (usually long before their first instances reach the protected organization). Unlike most proactive AV technologies, Commtouch Zero-Hour is a high-performance engine with extremely low CPU requirements.

"Aimed at detecting mass outbreak indicators, Zero-Hour is differentiated from other proactive virus detection technologies by several advantages. First and foremost is the immediate and accurate detection of new outbreaks" stated Yachin. "In a 6-month trial in a live ISP environment, this solution demonstrated signature-independent, new virus detection and blocking of well over 90%. This performance is especially impressive considering that common proactive solutions such as heuristic-based ones hardly exceed the 30% mark."

"With viruses increasingly targeting the early hour window of vulnerability, no security vendor can afford to rely solely on signatures. We believe we have the solution for AV vendors as well as AV integrators," said Oren Drori, director of product marketing at Commtouch.

Commtouch Software Ltd. is dedicated to protecting and preserving the integrity of the world's most important communications tool -- email. Commtouch has 14 years of experience developing messaging software, and is a global developer and provider of proprietary anti-spam and Zero-Hour virus protection solutions. Using core technologies including RPD-Recurrent Pattern Detection, the Commtouch Detection Center analyzes 1.5 billion email messages per month to identify new spam and malware outbreaks within minutes of their introduction into the Internet. Integrated by about 30 OEM partners, Commtouch technology protects thousands of organizations, with tens of millions of users in 100 countries. Commtouch is headquartered in Netanya, Israel and has a subsidiary in Mountain View, CA.
Technology Services: Get the answers you need, when you need them for your product, technical, professional and customer service questions.

http://productsource.govtech.net/stories.php?story=684

Dubi