Traditional Anti-Virus Won't Protect A Company Against New Threats

Last week, I graced Trend Micro Philippines' invitation to join a round table discussion on how the company's new Deep Security solution is helping protect corporations that deal with big data - including BPO, Banks, and government institutions - against fiercer and more targeted attacks by cyber criminals.

Trend Micro Philippines, Jay Yaneza

In his very insightful presentation, Mr. Jay Yaneza - Trend Micro's Senior Technical Manager of Security Software - noted that traditional antivirus and plain old blacklisting methods have become inadequate for small to big enterprises in the fast-evolving threat landscape in the Philippines and beyond.

Why, you ask? Well, Cyber criminals who are out to steal important data and even money from their corporate targets - among many other hideous activities - are becoming more and more smart, crafty, and persistent in penetrating the weak defense of a lot of companies. The truth is, for a lot of them, working around an outdated anti-virus software is but child's play.

On top of that, virtualization and cloud computing have altogether transformed our data centers as well as corporate computing as a whole. Thanks to today's tight system integration, worms, viruses, and malware can easily jump and multiply from one virtual desktop to another, effortlessly evading flimsy barriers set up by less capable software.

In this eye-opening video that Jay presented during the event, we saw how a group of persistent attackers were able break through traditional corporate security, explore the network effortlessly and almost at will and finally make off with the gold. This clip is based on the true story of how a global corporation was hacked, costing them more than $60 million.


But if you think large-scale corporate theft is already the pinnacle or zenith of what a cyber criminal employing advanced persistent threats can do, think again. Apparently, such attacks can also be used to terrorize nations and endanger the lives of thousands if not millions of people. Stuxnet, for instance, is a computer worm discovered in June 2010 that was made to attack and hijack Iran's nuclear facilities and other power grids around the world!

Trend Micro Philippines

It's scary; It really is. Just imagine the amount of damage and loss of lives had the people behind Stuxnet pushed the switch and actually used it to terrorize the world.


So if plain anti-virus or anti-malware has become sadly insufficient, what can enterprises do to protect themselves against these advanced threats?

There are a handful of solutions being offered by brands specializing in software and network security -- but with more than 20 years of experience (specific to addressing such issues), Trend Micro continues to develop Internet content security and threat management solutions that make it safe for businesses and consumers to exchange digital information.

Among its solutions is Trend Micro Deep Security which - according to the company - is capable of advanced server security for physical, virtual, and cloud servers. It protects enterprise applications and data from breaches and business disruptions.

Through its integration with VMware, Trend Micro Deep Security enables organizations to ensure the protection of enterprise information, reduced costs via virtualization, while seamlessly deploying server security updates.

Furthermore, Deep Security helps assure the PCI compliance and overall security of critical business servers and endpoints with a single, centrally managed solution that minimizes your operational costs. Its comprehensive, adaptive, highly efficient agentless and agent-based protection includes these features:
  • Anti-Malware - Integrates with VMware environments for agentless or agent-based malware protection
  • Integrity Monitoring - Monitors critical operating system, application files, and configuration files, and alerts personnel to unauthorized changes
  • Firewall - Decreases the attack surface of your virtual servers and enables the isolation of Virtual Managers (VMs) to reduce audit scope
  • Intrusion Detection and Prevention - Shields unpatched vulnerabilities from attack and to monitor traffic within the virtualized environment
  • Log Inspection - Provides visibility into important security events buried in log files and forwards these events to a centralized logging server
  • Web Reputation - Strengthens protection against web threats for servers and virtual desktops
  • Web Application Protection - Provides protection against attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, among others
Trend Micro Philippines is currently inviting enterprises - both big and small - to evaluate the Deep Security for an extended period of 90 days. For business heads and network managers who are interested, you may contact the Trend Micro Sales Team at marketingph@trendmicro.com and +632 9956200.