With Internet hackers on the loose,
network security has become a major concern in the corporate world.
Bhaskar Bakthavatsalu, country manager, India & SAARC, Check Point Software Technologies, shares his views and concerns on the same with CIOL.
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Excerpts:
CIOL: What are the major security concerns in the Indian market today?
Bhaskar Bakthavatsalu: Improving Internet security continues to be a moving target for many organisations and security administrators. To provide comprehensive protection, today's Internet security solutions must cover three categories of threats: advanced spam and phishing, malware and viruses and concentrated attacks on the network infrastructure. While some solutions protect against one or two of these categories, few fight against all three.
Today, the fight is more important than ever. Spam statistics are at their highest levels in history, in December 2007. Osterman Research said that over 80 percent of all messages sent over the Internet were unsolicited. And phishing has created entirely new categories of identity theft. Even malware such as viruses and worms has grown, in 2007, also according to Osterman Research, 84 percent of companies said that their networks had been affected by malware introduced via email.
Beyond these numbers, there are other, larger potential pitfalls. Containment is one, once a virus makes it past the network perimeter, companies have a hard time slowing it down. Response time is another issue because spam, phishing and email-borne malware are most often released in vast quantities over a relatively short period. Many corporations lack the ability to adapt quickly enough to the rapidly changing distribution and infiltration techniques of spammers, hackers and malware creators.
CIOL: How different are the security concerns in the domestic market from a global perspective?
BB: Internet security concern is a global phenomenon than local. Internet is not restricted itself to political boundaries, the security concerns that come along with it are also global in nature. However, adaptation of security solutions differs from organization to organization. Indian enterprises are also taking it more seriously. Even the SMB segments with their limited IT budgets are open in adapting suitable security solutions.
CIOL: What is Check Point SmartDefense Service?
BB: In a constantly changing threat environment, defenses must evolve with or ahead of threats. For defenses to evolve in real-time, an ongoing service is required. SmartDefense Services provide real-time and ongoing defenses, defense updates and configuration advice against emerging threats and attacks. SmartDefense Services also add completely new defense techniques for new and emerging protocols and applications between your regularly scheduled product upgrades.
