Enterprise adoption of BYOD policies, even in its best form, invites issues in terms of antivirus protection, especially for mobile devices such as smartphones & tablets. Antivirus is arguably dead in the water these days, but still widely in use in the IT layman community, by employees who are vaguely security conscious but still unsophisticated (which is entirely normal). A recent study of 21 free mobile antivirus products by Comparitech "…found serious security flaws in three of the apps we tested and found seven apps that couldn’t detect a test virus. In total, 47% of the vendors we tested failed in some way." Comparitech decided to go the, “name and shame” route with their study and resulting published report, and while the results are interesting, the larger problem of antivirus impotence remains the key point.
Is antivirus ineffective?
Antivirus scans often use heuristics, or “a problem-solving method that uses shortcuts to produce good-enough solutions given a limited time frame or deadline,” to search for certain recognizable elements which, when found, trigger an alarm. When creating a new virus, the first thing that bad actors do is find these common traits and tweak them to become unrecognizable to antivirus software. IT professionals have all but abandoned the use of antivirus software outside of the default protections included with an OS. In her article “Is Antivirus Useful, and How Do You Safeguard Your Device?,” Laura Tucker’s colleague explains that antivirus is “something that gives a slightly false sense of security.” and that “viruses have grown in sophistication and are often not easily removed by standard antivirus software.” It’s safe to say, that while antivirus might not be dead, it certainly should never be your first, last and only line of defence.
BYOD is here to stay.
A few statistics that speak for themselves:
- 60% of employees use a smartphone for work purposes (Dell)
- Companies favouring BYOD make an annual saving of $350 per year, per employee (Cisco)
- Using portable devices for work tasks saves employees 58 minutes per day while increasing productivity by 34% (Frost & Sullivan)
Both antivirus and BYOD are going nowhere, and with Increased the complexity of cybersecurity efficiency, employees simply can’t be expected to take control of company network security. So, what are the next steps? Simple – in every sense of the word. Make your enterprise network security simple, secure and more valuable.
Sangfor Technologies’ Next Generation Firewall (NGAF) is the world's first AI enabled and fully integrated Next Generation Firewall + WAF (Web Application Firewall) with all-around protection from all threats, powered by innovations like Neural-X and Engine Zero. Combining the power of all these products is Sangfor’s latest innovation, Endpoint Secure, trusted with blocking suspicious or unauthorized network communications, stopping exfiltration to Command & Control servers and access to phishing sites and managing and monitoring 10’s of thousands of endpoint assets. It is a truly secured, integrated and simplified firewall solution, providing a holistic overview of the entire organization security network.
Security Solution Highlights:
- Reporting Tools allow IT to view users, servers, abnormal traffic, attack status or attack sources individually, or view the entire network from top to bottom, on one screen.
- Simplified O&M with Real-Time Protection/Response: SMB’s without a specialized IT security team can use an intuitive configuration wizard to deploy blanket security policies or set individual restrictions based on what threats they are seeing in real-time on the network.
- Application Layer Security goes several steps beyond antivirus by adding WAF (Web Application Firewall, IPS (Intrusion Prevention System), and FW (Firewall) – a powerful knock-out combo punch for viruses, malware or ransomware seeking to access any network.
What are Neural-X and Engine Zero?
Neural-X is a cloud-based intelligence and analytic platform powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), designed to expand security detection capabilities for Sangfor's network, endpoint, and security-as-a-service offerings. The combination of threat intelligence, deep learning, sandboxing and botnet detection take security to the next level of power, intelligence and automation.
Engine Zero is a malware (malicious software) inspection engine. It seeks out viruses, worms and spyware, an evolution from the traditional virus detection we discussed above and available through antivirus. Engine Zero trains itself to identify the newest virus strains as fast as hackers can develop them – meaning those small changes that get a virus past antivirus, aren’t fooling Engine Zero.
Endpoint Secure Protection
Different from more traditional solutions for isolating malicious files at the endpoint, Endpoint Secure provides multiple mechanisms to mitigate threats based on files, machines and groups. Isolation response includes: endpoint host isolation, service group isolation, file trust, file isolation, file deletion, and file recovery. Through correlation with Sangfor’s suite of proven security products, not limited to those listed above, Endpoint Secure makes asset management simple and easy to understand.
Why Sangfor?
Sangfor builds products for security-minded businesses who understand their employees and their business, but not necessarily their networks. Security is the responsibility of the entire organization, and the job of protecting everyone simply can’t fall on the shoulders of the few members of the IT department. At one time anti-virus was giving them a hand – now it’s time for Sangfor to give them real protective power.
Founded in 2000 and a publicly traded company as of 2018 (SANGFOR STOCK CODE: 300454 (CH)), Sangfor Technologies is the global leading vendor of IT infrastructure solutions specializing in Network Security and Cloud Computing. Visit us at www.sangfor.com to learn more about your internet security options, benefits and functions, and make your IT simpler, more secure and more valuable.
