HP to come out with a 'Virus Throttler', soon

NEW DELHI: Engineers at the Palo Alto, research lab of Hewlett-Packard are working on a virus-throttler, a software that can slow the spread of Internet-borne viruses and worms. Said an online report.

According to the researchers the new software can identify and alert technicians of any suspicious behavior in case self-propagating worms have infected their computer. It however, cannot destroy threats such as the "Blaster" worm. Said the report.

Tony Redmond, chief technology officer at HP informed that this technology should effect all self-propagating worms. It can bar the computer from making several network connections thereby reducing the risk of it infecting computers on that network. If the technology was available at the time of the 'Slammer' out-break it would have saved the industry millions of dollars that were spent on repairing the damages it caused, added Redmond.

Researchers are quite pepped up by this new technology are of the view that the idea "makes sense."

The software will be made commercially available sometime next year. No price structure has been disclosed so far.

The software is already installed on 50 HP servers and it has slowed down intentionally introduced viruses -- without slowing down overall performance, according to HP.