Viruses

Viruses are the oldest know malware that continually threaten the security of your organization. The release of “Christmas Tree Exec” worm in 1987 to the “worm_autorun.epz” worm released in 2008 marks over 20 years of defending against these threats. Aperio has been able to keep the cost down for our clients due to the tools that we use and recommend. Robert Richardson the CSI Director has stated in the CSI 2008 Computer Crime and Security Survey “There were several years in which reported losses dropped significantly, followed by a jump last year, dropping again this year. What we see in this survey are the results of many years of improving and fine-tuning tools that, by and large, promote security by surrounding and scanning. Tools like the venerable firewall create a gate between an enterprise’s network assets and the untrusted outside Internet.”

Trojans

Trojan horse, also known as a trojan, is malware that appears to perform a desirable function but in fact performs undisclosed malicious functions. The most famous Trojan was the “Back Oriface 2000 trojan.” The delivery of the Trojan was through email. The user was asked to open the attachment which supposedly contained a joke. The Trojan was then installed and gave a hacker free reign of the user’s computer. Trend Micro and other security companies responded by coming up with a way to scan emails before they get to the users. This has cut down “wild outbreaks.” Aperio was one of the first to adopt the use of this product and put it production at all of our clients.

Spyware

Spyware and Adware are the newest threats that have been hitting network infrastructures. These malwares will get install on a user’s computer from websites. Spyware and Adware look for web browsing trends of the user, report those trends to a hacker, retailer or rogue websites and is used to run pop-ups on the user’s computer. They can run so many pop-ups that the computer is rendered unusable. To combat spyware, most companies have been running a separate spyware scanner that works much like the virus scanner. Trend Micro is the first company to combine the two so all you have to run is the Trend Micro Malware scanner. We have started recommending this approach because it cuts down on the computer overhead and is more efficient.