Cybercriminals Beware! By Bradley Anstis, Vice President of Products, Marshal
IT directors at small- to medium-size businesses take a variety of approaches to protecting their networks, employees and customers from viruses, spam, malware and data theft. However, many SMBs still rely on simple URL filtering to protect their network from malware attacks and desktop-level scans to prevent virus infiltration and spam.
Today, even signature-based anti-virus solutions are rapidly becoming obsolete as the Internet becomes a major source of infection for PCs. The massive popularity of Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube and Facebook as well as the popularity of blogs and social-networking sites has made Web content much harder to control. Today, even legitimate Web sites are routinely infected with malicious code, yet many companies are reluctant to restrict their employees' access to the Web. To make matters more challenging, employees are using computers and accessing the Web from just about anywhere, and there are new security regulations and laws that threaten serious consequences for leaked data.
For SMBs looking to secure data coming in and going out, the security application market is becoming crowded and confusing as vendors scramble to introduce multiple products, and "cybercriminals" become more inventive. The newest trend is toward easily administered and comprehensive security strategies that take an all-inclusive gateway approach to email and Web security.
All-inclusive Web security solutions that protect SMBs at the Web gateway are rapidly replacing simplistic URL filtering-based products. These products provide real-time malware and content scanning to protect against inbound and outbound security threats and prevent data leakage. Implementing a Secure Web Gateway solution is about keeping the bad things on the outside of the organization and ensuring that the good things remain within it, while also protecting the organization from the multitude of threats on today's Internet.
It is also about enabling employees to collaborate safely with external customers, partners or the supplier network through the Web gateway. A Secure Web Gateway allows SMBs to control employee access to inappropriate Web sites, monitor content uploads and downloads and manage personal Web use within the workplace, while protecting the organization against viruses, malware and outbound data loss.
Industry analysts are increasingly advising customers to look for multiple features when evaluating Web security solutions. These include comprehensive URL reporting with drilldown detail, malicious code filtering with a variety of non-signature techniques, inbound and outbound content scanning. These types of Web security applications go way beyond simple URL filtering to provide the protection companies need by scanning the actual content a user is accessing, as well as providing IT administrators with the control and flexibility they need to enforce the company acceptable use policies.
Besides the Internet, SMBs also need better control over Internet inbound and outbound email to prevent spam, malware, phishing attacks and, increasingly, data leakage. In the past year only, spam has more than doubled in volume, and new forms of spam such as image, PDF and MP3 spam have appeared along with reappearing old techniques. Moreover, instances of blended email and Web attacks enticing naive end users to download software that is designed to add PCs into a botnet have greatly increased. All of this indicates that spam is growing at an exponential rate and will continue to be a serious threat.
To combat the onslaught, SMBs can benefit from the new breed of all-inclusive email applications that unify email threat protection, content security, and policy and regulatory compliance as well as providing data leakage prevention. These solutions incorporate the email gateway security controls required to combat DOS/DHA attacks and provide multi-layered consistent anti-spam engines, end-user spam management tools, image analysis and IP reputation services support, plus the granular policy controls required to deploy the control and reporting IT administrators need to manage email environment.
SMBs will find greater protection using solutions that take an all-inclusive approach to Web and email security. These applications provide better protection than point solutions by performing real-time scanning at the gateways to protect against ever-changing security threats, prevent sensitive information from getting out, and to help companies comply with industry and government security regulations and mandates.
IT directors at small- to medium-size businesses take a variety of approaches to protecting their networks, employees and customers from viruses, spam, malware and data theft. However, many SMBs still rely on simple URL filtering to protect their network from malware attacks and desktop-level scans to prevent virus infiltration and spam. 
