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Anti-VirusViruses are the leading Internet security threat facing businesses of all sizes. They spread faster and cause more damage than ever before. Your anti-virus software is only as good as the last virus outbreak because it's a reactive measure against known virus threats, and as a result is out of date the moment a new virus is released. Updating, detection, and policy enforcement play a key role in meeting the latest threats and protecting your networks. The challenge is not just having anti-virus software deployed on your company's computer systems, the challenge is how to ensure that your network is protected when a new virus outbreak occurs and how you distribute the anti-virus updates the instant they become available. The best defense against today's virus threats is an active virus protection system that automatically acquires the latest anti-virus software, updates all appropriate systems and enforces anti-virus software updates. The SonicWALL Anti-Virus Centre is designed to deliver a complete one-stop resource to help you:
Active Virus ProtectionWhat is active virus protection? Technically, it's a distributed, gateway-enforced anti-virus solution. What it delivers is always on, always updated anti-virus software to the network. With SonicWALL active anti-virus protection, no employee can access the Internet without the latest updates. If a virus attack happens, you can be assured that SonicWALL is updating your business' anti-virus software as soon as it is available. SonicWALL Network Anti-Virus (NAV) includes the automatic policy enforcement and management of McAfee anti-virus signature and client software updates, and SonicWALL's attachment blocking service-all as an affordable per-client subscription. Here's how SonicWALL Network Anti-Virus works.
Auto-Enforcement
and Management
The key to the SonicWALL Network Anti-Virus enforcement process is based on a series of communications between the McAfee VirusScan client residing on each desktop and the SonicWALL Internet security appliance. The SonicWALL Internet security appliance stands on guard at your Internet gateway for virus update alerts and handles all the virus enforcement and management. SonicWALL's Auto-Enforcement works like this:
Rapid
E-Mail Attachment Blocking The SonicWALL Internet security appliance can also block new viruses even before the virus signature is available. When a new virus outbreak occurs, the virus filename is instantly relayed to the SonicWALL Internet security appliance. Any infected e-mail file attachment from the Internet is blocked at the SonicWALL Internet security appliance. This early detection system protects your network from new viruses even before their inoculations are available. Zero
Administration SonicWALL takes anti-virus protection a giant step forward with zero administration. Auto-Enforcement manages all aspects of virus protection from client software installation to virus policy enforcement. This means no administration and no hidden IT costs inherent in other centralised virus management solutions. Integrated
Security SonicWALL Network Anti-Virus is a member of the SonicWALL family of security products and services. The foundation of SonicWALL's comprehensive security solutions is our line of easy-to-install and easy-to-manage SonicWALL Internet security appliances. They provide enterprise-class firewall protection with an ICSA-certified, statetful packet inspection firewall, IPSec VPN for secure remote access, IP address management, and fully integrated support for SonicWALL security applications like VPN services, Network Anti-Virus, Content Filtering, and Strong Authentication. SonicWALL's intuitive Web-interface management makes security setup and management easy. New Threats Require New Measures Anti-virus scanners are the front line technology for preventing virus attacks. They can reside on a server, gateway, or client. The heart of an anti-virus product is the scanning engine, which conducts the scanning of files as it looks for viruses. A database of known virus signatures is what the scanning engine checks against. A signature is a search pattern, characters or bytes that are usually unique to each virus. Because anti-virus software is primarily a reactive measure against known threats, updating, detection and policy enforcement play a key role in meeting the latest threats and protecting networks from infection. Updating your anti-virus software in the fastest time possible is the only way to minimise damage to your network. Today's virus protection is all about time-to-protection. Time
to Protection
Virus protection is ultimately about how quickly the anti-virus software can be updated to protect your network against the latest virus attack. Traditional anti-virus software is vulnerable during two critical gaps. First is the gap between the release of a new virus and the release of the anti-virus update. Second, the time it takes to implement virus updates to every PC on your network. When a virus outbreak happens, virus vendors analyse the virus, identify its unique signature, and create the anti-virus. This process can take hours or days to complete. Virus vendors often send out incremental anti-virus updates as they develop more knowledge about the threat. Unless the anti-virus software has a mechanism to get these updates instantly instead of at scheduled intervals, the network remains vulnerable. The biggest time-to-protection gap is getting the new virus updates to all the computers on a network. Anti-virus software deployed on PCs without centralised enforcement requires users or administrators to update the virus software one at a time. Even with a centralised anti-virus management console, an administrator needs to manage the updates. Removing
the Human Factor in Enforcement The human factor in virus protection represents a potential risk to your business network. Keeping up with the rapid-fire changes in anti-virus updates places a heavy burden on administrators. Employees can easily turn virus protection off, as, for example when installing new software. Without a method of ensuring that the anti-virus software is always active, virus protection across the network will degrade as more and more users fail to restore their virus protection. Enforcement is an essential element of virus protection. Virus policy enforcement isn't just about getting updates quicker, it's also about ensuring virus protection is always running on every PC on the network. Automatic
Anti-Virus Management While AV protection is most effective at the desktop, desktops are also the most likely place where exposure risk is highest or where maintaining effectiveness is most difficult. Centralised enforcement is an economic necessity for any business with more than a few computers. It's simply not viable to manage every desktop's anti-virus software by manually installing and configuring each time there is an update. Besides the enormous costs involved, there is too much margin for error in a manual process. On the downside, most centralised anti-virus management products create more cost and complexity to your virus protection infrastructure. Typically, the virus management software runs on a network server and requires IT resources to set up and maintain. A centralised virus management solution that automatically installs, maintains, and updates anti-virus clients eliminates nearly 80% of the total cost of implementing virus protection. Integrated
Firewall Protection
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