Tackling the entire virus lifecyle
By RASLAN SHARIF
6th June 2002 (The Star)

PETALING JAYA: Antivirus software vendor Trend Micro Inc says its new "Enterprise Protection Strategy" (EPS) solution can cut response times to virus outbreaks by up to half, also and reduce related cleanup costs.

Trend Micro claimed that a recent six-month trial conducted with its enterprise customers showed a response time improvement of 50% through the use of its outbreak prevention services, a key component of its new EPS offering.

Studies by research firm Computer Economics show that 80% of the costs associated with managing virus outbreaks in corporations come from the act of cleaning up infected computer systems.

According to Trend Micro, having a more comprehensive outbreak management strategy like EPS would minimise expensive cleanup work.

EPS is basically an integrated combination of software and services targeted at managing virus outbreaks on corporate networks.

The software components are made up of the latest versions of existing antivirus software that the company provides - ScanMail, Interscan and Trend Micro Control Manager - as well as new software like OfficeScan and ServerProtect which are scheduled for release in the third quarter of this year.

"This is different from the traditional approach of using point solutions that mainly focus on downloading patches and cleanup. we are tackling the entire lifecycle with EPS," said Trend Micro regional sales director Goh Chee Hoh.

When a potentially dangerous new virus starts to make its rounds, Trend Micro would make available outbreak prevention policies for EPS users to download and deploy on their networks, while the company's software developers work on a pattern file, or patch.

For example, if the particular virus struck via e-mail, the policies could be in the form of shutting down the e-mail server or filtering e-mail attachments with certain characteristics.

"You concentrate only on isolating parts of the network that are at risk, without having to shut down other areas unnecessarily, so there is minimum impact to productivity and workflow," said Goh.

He added that EPS' software talks directly to Trend Micro servers every 15 minutes, so that whenever a new virus threat emerges, such policies are made available within a short frame of time.

In the six-month trial that began in December last year, around 570 policy downloads were made for 14 virus alerts that were issued since January 1 this year.

Those policies took an average of 18 minutes to be deployed, with patches installed in an average of 36 minutes, the company claims.

Goh said this response time was more than 50% faster than the usual way of handling viruses.

After a patch for a particular virus is downloaded and installed, EPS would allow users to perform threat-based scanning that executes scanning policies specific to the threat.

"The policy engine is bundled with the scan engine, so scanning is done where the threat is," Goh said.

Later on, additional downloaded software tools assess damage, clean up and rid the network of the virus.

"The entire outbreak lifecycle centrally and automatically managed via EPS," said Goh.