McAfee, a Network Associates business has announced the industry`s first solution to enable third party developers and service providers to easily embed the market-leading McAfee VirusScan engine into either Sun Solaris-based or Linux-based e-business applications, Internet appliances and managed service offerings.
The new McAfee VIPER (Virus Interface for Protective Early Response) for Solaris and Linux are software development toolkits that create high-performance anti-virus solutions for demanding e-business applications, such as scanning Internet e-mail traffic, and Web server downloads for viruses and malicious code including the "Zombie" code which caused recent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
According to research firm Computer Economics, virus outbreaks cost e-businesses and end users more than $12.1 billion (about R72 billion) worldwide in 1999 alone. In addition, the Yankee Group estimates that the recent DDoS attacks on major e-commerce sites caused approximately $1.2 billion (R7 billion) in losses.
With the introduction of the McAfee VIPER for Solaris and Linux toolkits, McAfee continues its product leadership in making anti-virus protection part of the Internet infrastructure. McAfee is the first and only anti-virus provider to allow Solaris and Linux solution providers and third-party and corporate developers to increase the security of their e-business offerings by embedding the industry`s leading virus protection directly into their applications, appliances and managed service offerings.
For Web, gateway, mail and file servers, the Sun Solaris operating system is one of the most popular Internet platforms with the Linux operating system gaining significant market share. These two platforms were found with Zombie code in last week`s attacks, making the performance and security of applications running on these e-business critical servers, of paramount importance. Key benefits of the McAfee VIPER toolkit include:
Ability to write directly to scanning engine for enhanced performance and protection of high Internet traffic environments
Support for HTTP, SMTP, and FTP protocol scanning
On the fly file decompression, macro virus support and heuristic analysis
Automatic updates for maintenance-free protection.
Industry leading virus detection and cleaning
Scanning of boot sectors, partition sector and files
Support from McAfee AVERT (Anti-Virus Emergency Response Team), the world`s leading anti-virus research group
"By delivering the McAfee VIPER toolkit, McAfee is ensuring that customers, developers and service providers can protect critical e-business applications from virus infection at the network entry point," said Network Associates anti virus specialist Lee Fisher. "As more companies rely on the Internet to drive their e-business, the demand for Solaris-based solutions has increased. The McAfee VIPER toolkit enables third parties to embed industry-leading anti-virus security technology into their Solaris and Linux-based e-business offerings to provide customers with maximum protection at the Internet gateway."
The introduction of the McAfee VIPER toolkit continues McAfee`s leadership on the Solaris and Linux platforms. This includes the McAfee WebShield Solution for Solaris, which is the first all-in-one Internet gateway protection for virus, hostile code and content security, and the WebShield product for Linux, which is the first major software vendor solution in any application area to support the Linux operating system back in 1996.
Today, the McAfee VirusScan family of products supports the greatest number of platforms in the industry, including Linux, Windows 3.x, Windows 9x, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Novell Netware, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, SCO OpenServer and the Mac OS.
The McAfee VIPER toolkit is a key component of McAfee`s award-winning McAfee Active Virus Defense (AVD) solution. McAfee, a Network Associates business, provides the leading and most manageable anti-virus solutions to protect e-businesses from virus attacks. McAfee Active Virus Defense is the award-winning multi-tier virus security solution that includes VirusScan desktop protection, NetShield for file servers, GroupShield GroupWare protection and WebShield software for Internet gateway protection. McAfee also provides the most effective tools to manage virus security policy, updates and reporting with ePolicy Orchestrator and Anti-Virus Informant.
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