Malware, spam, and other Web threats are a clear and present danger to organizations of every size and in every industry. The consequences of malware infecting an organization are numerous and include a wide variety of problems, ranging from minor annoyances to the destruction of data. Worse, data-stealing malware, such as keystroke loggers, can enter a network, intercept sensitive or confidential content, and send it to unauthorized parties. Further, this information can be stolen by merely opening a Web page on malicious, fraudulent, or hijacked sites. The Web has become the primary means of distributing malware, infecting users that follow dangerous links in spam, follow poisoned search results, or visit hijacked legitimate sites. Defending against malware can make it difficult to conduct business safely.
Compounding the problem is the fact that malware is becoming more virulent, more stealthy and more difficult to detect. Worse, the lifecycle for many malware variants can now be measured in minutes, not hours or days-- many variants appear, do their damage and then disappear long before new pattern files or signatures can be deployed and propagated to servers and clients on the network.
However, if an organization could dramatically reduce the length of time required to access threat intelligence using in-the-cloud reputation databases to block new malware and spam variants before they even reach the network, it could reduce the rate of endpoint infection, lower its security management and lost productivity costs, and reduce the likelihood of security breaches. Further, if an organization opted to combine these activities with the consolidation of its content security infrastructure to just a single vendor, the advantages and cost savings would be even greater.
Read this paper to learn the proven benefits of single-vendor content security infrastructure solutions.
Information Security Research Library
