eEye Digital Security introduces Blink 2.0

SecureData, a member of the JSE-listed ERP.com Group and the southern African enterprise partner for eEye Digital Security, today announced the latest version of the latter's award-winning endpoint security software for Microsoft Windows-based systems - Blink 2.0.

The most powerful and comprehensive endpoint security software product on the market today, version 2.0 augments Blink's industry-leading intrusion prevention capabilities by incorporating protection against security threats that are wreaking havoc with enterprise networks.

With the addition of anti-spyware and protection from "phishing" scams, Blink 2.0 delivers more layers of protection than any other endpoint platform, providing businesses with complete security for their borderless networks while ensuring business continuity.

"The primary concern of enterprise CIOs is the availability of systems and services within the network - security technology exists solely as a means to further that goal," stated Firas Raouf, eEye's COO.

"As a result, the many large enterprises that have already deployed the Blink platform know it represents much more than security software. It is a tool that businesses use to improve productivity and maximise network uptime, thus improving their overall bottom line."

Blink's multiple layers of protection provide enterprises with the most powerful host-based tool to ensure business continuity. Blink allows enterprises to defer patching vulnerable machines until regularly scheduled maintenance cycles, thereby saving millions of dollars in lost business disruption and the associated IT resource drain caused by 'panic' patching.

In addition, thousands of organisations running mission-critical applications on operating systems that are no longer supported by their software vendors are left with the unattractive choice of spending an enormous amount of money on a 'forklift' upgrade or leaving these crucial systems open to attack. Blink provides these businesses with the ability to secure these crucial services and ensure they remain up and running in the absence of a patch.

New regulations such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley translate into specific security policies that must be implemented throughout an enterprise network. Blink, which can be configured to ensure specific policies are always in effect on individual systems, provides enterprises with a centrally deployed, centrally managed means to guarantee policy compliance, even for networks with hundreds of thousands of machines.

Remote and mobile workers unintentionally acquire vulnerabilities and other security issues 'in the wild' and introduce these threats into the corporate network once they reconnect, bypassing perimeter-level network security. Blink provides the means to isolate and evaluate each machine prior to its reconnection to the network.

"Gartner believes intrusion prevention and security configuration compliance enforcement are critical processes for enterprises to stay secure and keep critical business systems available," added John Pescatore, research vice-president at Gartner. "Security and IT operations managers need proactive solutions that block known and unknown attacks while ensuring PCs and servers comply with both internal security policies and external regulations."

Blink leverages multiple layers of protection - more so than any other endpoint security product - to shield individual digital assets from intrusion and keep a business up and running. The primary layer is an intrusion prevention mechanism that protects from attacks leveraging yet unknown vulnerabilities. Blink is unique in that it focuses on the methods of exploitation that such attacks utilise. This enables Blink to stop intrusion without having to identify the unique signature of the attack itself, while stopping the attack before it infects the system.

With Blink 2.0, eEye has incorporated additional capabilities in order to consolidate and simplify endpoint security for the enterprise. These include:

Malware is a collective term to refer to spyware and other software that intentionally perform malicious tasks on a computer system. Blink provides real-time malicious code protection that actively blocks spyware, keystroke/password loggers from being loaded into memory. It also provides the option to quarantine or remove the suspect code - functionality far beyond current spyware technology. As a secondary layer of defence, Blink will also perform intelligent disk scanning to identify and remove malware from the system.

Phishing attacks use 'spoofed' e-mails and fraudulent Web sites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, social security numbers, etc. By hijacking the trusted brands of well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies, phishers are able to convince up to 5% of recipients to respond to them.

Leveraging its protocol analysis engine, Blink is now able to detect and classify phishing attempts made via the POP3, IMAP or HTTP protocols. This includes images used to convey these phishing attacks. Similar to Blink's ability to analyse methods of attack, it is also able to recognise malicious Web site images or redirects that may be used as part of phishing scams and alert both the user and IT.

The 'last line of defence' in Blink, this layer of protection prevents execution exploits from compromising a machine, thwarting all buffered code execution exploits currently in existence without requiring a system to be profiled or taught what is acceptable behaviour.

In addition to these new capabilities, Blink 2.0 retains all of the multiple layers of security of the original award-winning Blink. These capabilities are delivered in the form of a software agent that is managed from a centralised console and implemented on each device - such as a laptop, server or PC - running any Microsoft operating system. Blink can be installed, updated and managed in a transparent manner without requiring end-user intervention so as not to impact productivity.

For further information, please contact Willem Barnard at telephone (011) 257 8600; fax (011) 257 8699; e-mail willemb@securedata.co.za.