RSSSymantec Acquires Anti-Phishing Firm
By Ed Oswald | Published September 23, 2005, 11:18 AM
Looking to improve the security and anti-phishing capabilities of its products, Symantec on Thursday announced that it had acquired WholeSecurity. The firm's technology analyzes worms and viruses in order to better provide protection against attacks, rather than looking for signatures of specific threats.
This approach works better than traditional methods says WholeSecurity, because it can stop an unknown attack immediately by looking for a set of characteristics common to viruses, worms and code attacks.
"We have been the first line of defense for our customers, protecting them against new forms of malicious threats before signatures can be created," J. Peter Selda, president and CEO, WholeSecurity said.
Panda Software employs similar technology in its TruPrevent line of products to preemptively protect users from new or undocumented attacks.
Selda says the combination of Symantec and his company would enable WholeSecurity to bring its products to a much larger audience. Currently, about 100 customers use WholeSecurity's software, including eBay, Visa, Deutsche Bank, Raymond James, and Comeria.
WholeSecurity arsenal includes four major products. Confidence Online for Web Applications offers protection for unmanaged or remote computers that do not have the client installed, allowing clean computers to access the Web application while blocking infected ones.
Confidence Online for Corporate PCs provides real-time protection for managed computers, and Confidence Online for E-Commerce protects consumer e-commerce sessions.
Finally, the Confidence Online Phish Finder provides browser-based protection from phishing Web sites. Many consumers already unknowingly use this feature - it is the phishing protection built into the eBay toolbar.
The acquisition is expected to close next month.
free anti phishing tools like callingID are simple to download at www.callingid.com
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|Symantec is just swallowing up smaller companies aren't they? Gee.
And as far as AV and security products go - there's nothing wrong with Norton. The roots of Norton's issues are file dependencies and memory useage. And someone with a mid to high end PC would have no problem with it. It detects ALL REAL viruses/worms, etc. Symantec AV is the same deal with the difference that because it's (supposed to be) server based, an update doesn't require a restart and it's been made to 'watch' over other PCS that are using it. It's got less features because it's meant to be an office/workspace solution which 'does it's job, and it's job only'.
Mcafee is similar, except that mcafee, like nod32 has so many false positives that over the years people have loft faith in it. Thus their partnerships now with MS and AOL in an attempt to recapture some market from Noron.
As I said, Nod32 is absolutely ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, it's good scanner - but if you're not careful with it you'll be deleting non-infected files. Too many false positives for my liking.
Avast is where it's at for me currently. I just hope Symantec leaves them alone; or well - if the worse happens and they buy up Alwil I hope they stick with the Avast scanning engine.
It's a nice clean engine - updates it's virus databases daily, and runs a smooth scan which doesn't halt or peck at system performance. I use the Pro.
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|Neo, those are valid points. I haven't had too many false positives with NOD32. I have SAV 10 CE as my backup, but I've been tweaking NOD32 2.50 Admin version and feel pretty solid with it. I periodically like to use No-CD cracks for games, and both SAV and McAfee detected a DLL used in one of these cracks as a trojan. Since it has trojan-like properties, I can understand why these were picked up. NOD32 found it the first time, but then I flagged the file and it hasn't bothered me since about it. I have not been able to find a similar setting in McAfee or SAV that would work in the same fashion. However, this only leads me to believe 1 thing: AV is as much a personal pref as it is anything else. I hate McAfee just from bad experiences lately. SAV wasn't as robust as I would have liked it, but it does a solid job. NOD32 seemed to work the best, but I have heard of people having very mixed results.
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|WoW. Battle of the mainstream!
My heart is still broken for the lost of Sygate to Symantec...Why did they have to buy my beloved Sygate.
If Kaspersky sold out to McAfee or Symantec, I would be devistated! Regardless of who they buy, it's obvious their products are worthless.
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|McAfee = Worthless, Norton AV = Worthless.
Symantec AV = solid product. NOD32 = best AV solution to date. Your statement is about as conclusive as it is intelligent.
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