- Is Microsoft preparing us to move beyond Vista?
- Why Google wanted to lose wireless spectrum auction
- iPhone shortage fuels rumors of imminent 3G phone
- XP for cheap PCs: a second crack in the wall
- Darts into data: Leveraging random action to competitive advantage
- Most iPhone buyers are existing Apple customers
- AT&T's so-called open network principles
- Mono dev tool offered
- ActiveState upgrades IDE
- Serena plans SaaS products
December 07, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Group will fight IM threats with honeypots
IMlogic and other security vendors announced a consortium Tuesday to fight IM and P-to-P (peer-to-peer) viruses, worms and unwanted spam.
Hoping to nip a looming problem in the bud, the IMlogic Threat Center will provide detection, analysis, alert, and protection as well as rapid response and guidance for protection against newly detected threats.
Francis deSouza, CEO of IMLogic, said a significant tool in establishing IM and P-to-P defenses will be deployment of honeypots to detect threats as they appear.
"I'm not going to talk about the details because this is a security issue, but the intent is to allow IM traffic around the world to be sent to us so that we could identify any threats."
The group also includes security companies McAfee and Sybari Software, and IM providers Yahoo, America Online and Microsoft.
The consortium is offering free alerts and e-mail notifications of risk assessments and threat management for subscribers.
Honeypots which are set up to attract messaging traffic can give valuable ad-vance warning, said Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, a messaging industry marketing and research company.
"You can set up collection points all around the world, so the likelihood is that a new IM threat will hit one of these honeypots," he said.
The move comes none to soon for the burgeoning messaging industry. "IM will swiftly become less public and less interesting unless it is kept free of (threats), so banding together to solve this problem absolutely essential," said Dana Gardner, senior analyst with The Yankee Group.
The effort is being coordinated at the IMlogic Threat Center, which is on the Waltham, Mass. company's Web site at http://www.imlogic.com/im_threat_center/index.asp. Internet users can also sign up for threat alerts at the site.
Three high-risk and three medium-risk virus alerts had already been posted at the threat center on Tuesday.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on December 7, 2004 02:39 PM
RATE THIS ARTICLE:
-
- COMMENTS
TOP STORIES
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Virtual Machines: Sun's xVM Virtualization Portfolio
- Migrating to Vista
- Turning Information Into A Competitive Advantage
- Speeding Business Innovation with Data Center Transformation
- Security and Trust: The Backbone of Doing Business over the Internet
- Forrester Data Center Automation
- Protection for Remote Sites and Branch Offices
- WAN Emulation Sponsored Solutions Guide
- Planning For A Disaster
IT JOBS
