Smart Protection Network - Today's Security Challenges

The Internet has become a powerful platform that has changed the way we do business and the way we communicate. It offers anonymity, a growing user base, and evolving technologies that expose new, exploitable weaknesses. Anytime we browse the Web or click on a URL embedded in an email, we put ourselves and others at risk from Web-based threats.

Today's threat landscape is characterized by profit-driven cyber criminals, who have taken advantage of the evolution of the Internet to create a powerful underworld economy.

Yesterday's security solutions no longer protect from today's threats. Today's security solutions need to address two key challenges:

• A dramatic change in the threat landscape has produced more complex types of threats.
  
  
• An explosion in the number of threats has triggered a pattern download volume problem.

To outsmart cybercriminals, a more comprehensive approach to security is needed. Trend Micro offers that approach today—with the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network. Stop Web threats before they reach you.

It's security made smarter.

Threat Landscape Produces More Complex Types

Just a few years ago, a typical threat might be a virus delivered in the form of an email attachment. "Melissa" and "I love you" are two examples of viruses many of us still remember only too well. Designed to spread quickly, viruses often led to wide-spread outbreaks—yet they were relatively simplistic in nature. The virus writers' primary goal was to gain notoriety or fame, and regular pattern updates to anti-virus software typically eliminated the problem.

Today's threats, however, are infinitely more sophisticated and in turn, more dangerous. Fueled by technology-savvy and profit-driven cyber criminals, Web-based threats are multi-dimensional, coordinated attacks that can cause significant damages including financial loss, identity theft, and loss of intellectual property or trade secrets to name a few. Not just your information, but your personal and/or business reputation are at stake.

Threat Explosion Triggers Pattern Download

Malicious attacks have grown exponentially. In 1988 security vendors dealt with 1,738 unique threat samples. During the first two months of 2008 alone, 1.1 million unique samples were reported.* Trend Micro has seen a 1,731% increase in Web threats since 2005.

Security vendors are reacting by issuing more frequent pattern updates. This overwhelming increase in the number of threats and the consequent volume of updates has significant impact on the system resources required to manage these pattern downloads, often leading to critical performance issues—an approach that is not sustainable over time.

* Source: AV-Test.org