Check Point Software Technologies. (Nasdaq: CHKP), the worldwide leader in securing the Internet, today announced a new Anti-Bot Software Blade that protects against bots and APTs (advanced persistent threats). A bot is malicious software that enables cyber-criminals to take over computers and execute illegal activities - such as stealing data, gaining access to unauthorised network resources, initiating denial of service (DOS) attacks or distributing spam.
Bots are remotely controlled, typically disguised, and operate without the user's knowledge. Check Point's new Anti-Bot Software Blade helps customers discover bots and prevent damages by blocking communication between infected hosts and remote operators. The new solution will be integrated into every gateway to provide businesses with multi-layered bot prevention against malware threats, with high traffic performance of over 40Gbps - ensuring all channels of business communication remain secure.
Bots can create a dramatic increase in malware attacks, resulting in significant brand damage, data loss and financial costs to businesses. Botnets, such as Zeus and Mariposa, are infamous forms of malware used to execute cyber-criminal activities, such as stealing banking information or executing DOS attacks.
While there have been several highly publicised botnets, most attacks are hard to identify and can proliferate silently without an organisation's knowledge. Cyber criminals today are implementing a variety of stealthy techniques to avoid detection - often disabling PC anti-virus software to hide their presence, or leveraging encryption and alternative protocols to masquerade as legitimate traffic. Bots are also often used as tools in targeted attacks known as APTs, such as Stuxnet and Operation Aurora.
Check Point's new Anti-Bot Software Blade is designed to stop bots in their tracks by leveraging advanced technology that helps businesses discover, remediate and prevent future threats. The solution features Check Point's Multi-tier ThreatSpect, a unique detection engine that analyses traffic on every gateway, identifies millions of outbreak types, and discovers bots by correlating multiple risk factors - such as botnet patterns, remote operator hide-outs and attack behaviours.
When a bot is identified, customers can quickly analyse their level of risk through intuitive dashboards that highlight bots and their business implications - such as data loss or an increase in fraudulent spam distribution. Check Point's Anti-Bot solution provides administrators with the information they need to investigate infections with extensive forensic capabilities - helping security teams enforce multi-layered protection and accelerate remediation time.
“With bot toolkits for hackers selling today for the mere price of $500, and attacks costing businesses millions of dollars, it gives people insight into how big the problem has become. As seen with Mariposa, TDL-4 and Zeus, botnets are stealthy in nature, and have the potential to infect millions of computers,” said Dorit Dor, vice-president of products at Check Point Software Technologies.
“While thousands of companies have already been targets of bots and APTs, businesses have the responsibility to stop it from spreading. Our new anti-bot solution is focused on bot prevention, empowering customers to quickly discover and block bots, before they can threaten security or the flow of business.”
In addition to Check Point's advanced discovery technology, the Anti-Bot Software Blade revolutionises bot prevention by providing customers with unique, multi-layered protection on every gateway by integrating with existing security protections, such as Intrusion Prevention, Antivirus & Anti-Malware and URL Filtering. For the first time in the industry, businesses benefit from a unified bot prevention solution, while delivering high traffic performance of up to 40Gbps.
“Because bots are stealthy in nature, and designed to manipulate the user, many companies aren't aware when a computer is infected, and their security team often lacks proper visibility into the threats that botnets create,” said Jon Oltsik, senior principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.
“Check Point's new Anti-Bot Software Blade is a promising offering for organisations looking for a solution that discovers bot infections across multiple layers of the network, and can help them analyse their security risks in business terms.”
Key features and benefits of the Anti-Bot Software Blade:
* Innovative and multi-tier bot discovery - Check Point's multi-tier ThreatSpect engine analyses network traffic through the gateway for inline prevention, correlating multiple risk factors to uniquely discover bots. Customers benefit from instant bot intelligence with Check Point's ThreatCloud, a repository that pushes automatic threat updates to the Anti-Bot Software Blade, making it easy for businesses to enforce protection against the latest generation of threats.
* Pre-emptive protection - Helps businesses prevent bot damages by blocking communication between the infected machine and the command and control (C&C) servers before a cyber-criminal can take control of the network.
* Forensics and reporting - Enables customers to analyse risk through malware reports and dashboards, providing infection summaries. Customers have the ability to drill-down into specific bot incidents, investigating infections with extensive forensic capabilities and easily assess potential damages.
* Integrated prevention - The Anti-Bot Software Blade is designed to easily integrate with customers' existing security protections, including: intrusion prevention, which protects against emerging vulnerabilities; anti virus and anti-malware, which prevents file transfers of malicious viruses; and URL filtering, which blocks access to malicious sites. With an integrated, multi-layer solution, Check Point helps customers consolidate security, while protecting their business against bots across all layers of the network.
* Central management - Central policy management through the Software Blade Architecture simplifies management complexity with a holistic view of the network.
To learn more about how Check Point revolutionises the fight against bots, listen to the Webcast with Gil Shwed, founder, chairman and CEO of Check Point, as he introduces the new solution to the market: http://www.checkpoint.com.
“Our new Anti-Bot Software Blade is a breakthrough in bot prevention. We're making it easy for customers to enforce Anti-Bot protection across all layers of the network, and prevent their businesses from being exploited,” concluded Dor.
Additional resources:
* Infographic: Botnets - The Stealthy Online Threat - http://bit.ly/oHvrjl
* Video: The Threat of Bots and Botnets - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6495O71W5iE
* Video: The Anti-Bot Software Blade - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaykuZZhujc
* Visit Check Point's Botnet Threat resource page for the latest anti-bot news and information: http://www.checkpoint.com/products/anti-bot-software-blade/anti-bot-software-blade-landing-page.html
Availability:
The Anti-Bot Software Blade will be available for purchase through the Check Point worldwide network of value-added resellers in the first quarter of 2012. To find a Check Point partner, visit: http://partners.us.checkpoint.com/partnerlocator/.
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Check Point Software Technologies
Check Point Software Technologies (www.checkpoint.com), the worldwide leader in securing the Internet, provides customers with uncompromised protection against all types of threats, reduces security complexity and lowers total cost of ownership. Check Point first pioneered the industry with FireWall-1 and its patented stateful inspection technology. Today, Check Point continues to develop new innovations based on the Software Blade Architecture, providing customers with flexible and simple solutions that can be fully customised to meet the exact security needs of any organisation. Check Point is the only vendor to go beyond technology and define security as a business process. Check Point 3D Security uniquely combines policy, people and enforcement for greater protection of information assets, and helps organisations implement a blueprint for security that aligns with business needs. Customers include tens of thousands of organisations of all sizes, including all Fortune and Global 100 companies. Check Point's award-winning ZoneAlarm solutions protect millions of consumers from hackers, spyware and identity theft.
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