Cyberoam, a division of Elitecore Technologies and the innovator of identity-based Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions, today announced the Q2 2009 Internet threats trend report, prepared in collaboration with its partner, Commtouch. The highlight of the report was a sharp rise in the number of new viruses being circulated via email which major anti-virus engines were unable to defend against for several hours, leaving networks exposed.

One reason for the rise in such malware outbreaks is the appearance of aggressive new variants of several different Trojans for which major anti-virus products took anything between 4 to 80 hours time to detect the malware. In contrast, Cyberoam's Zero Hour Virus Outbreak protection – provided by Commtouch – detected and blocked these malware within the earliest moments of its outbreak, plugging the early-hour vulnerability gap during which millions of users could have been infected.

Says Abhilash Sonwane, Vice-President-Product Management, Cyberoam, “Today’s viruses, worms and Trojan downloaders target the biggest weakness in traditional anti-viruses – an inability to release remedial signatures and heuristics within moments of new malware outbreaks. Cyberoam’s combined technique of pro-active zero-hour virus outbreak detection and traditional signature-based Anti-Virus is the recommended defense for such attacks.”

Attackers continue to find creative means of bypassing security solutions. In a new phishing trend, they used a unique redirection method that enables them to bypass traditional URL filtering solutions by hiding code between pages hosted on a legitimate education site which they have hijacked. Apart from this, there has been a resurgence in the once-popular image spam messages – this time using new tactics such as foregoing MIME-format standards to bypass traditional spam filters. Intricate scams such as Nigerian 419 schemes are making headlines once again. Spam has slipped through Gmail filters too.

Among other threats this quarter, was the use of current events to appeal to recipients’ emotions. Global events including the death of pop superstar, Michael Jackson, and the spread of the swine flu were popular spam subjects. Among Web 2.0 trends, streaming media and downloads are among the top 10 Web site categories infected with malware; they are also two of the most popular categories within the category of user generated content sites.

Cyberoam uses the Commtouch RPDTM technology to analyze large volumes of Internet traffic in real-time. Unlike traditional spam filters, it does not rely on email content, so it is able to detect spam in any language and in every message format (including images, HTML, etc.), non-English characters, single and double byte, etc. Its language and content agnostic nature enables it to provide effective spam blocking capabilities. Cyberoam incorporates this technology within its unique identity-based UTM appliances, which deploy user identity-based functionality across all of its features. A departure from traditional IP address-dependent solutions, Cyberoam determines precisely who is doing what in the network, providing IT managers with stronger policy control and clearer visibility of activity.

Click here to read the full report on Q2 2009 Internet Threat Trends

About Cyberoam
Cyberoam Identity-based UTM appliances offer comprehensive protection against existing and emerging Internet threats, including viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, phishing, pharming and more. Cyberoam delivers the complete range of security features such as stateful inspection firewall, VPN, gateway anti-virus, gateway anti-malware, gateway anti-spam, intrusion prevention system, content filtering in addition to bandwidth management and multiple link management over a single platform. Cyberoam is certified by the West Coast Labs with CheckMark UTM Level 5 Certification, ICSA Lab, an independent division of Verizon Business, and the Virtual Private Network Consortium. Cyberoam has received the 2008 Emerging Vendor of the Year award by Frost & Sullivan, 2007 Global Excellence Awards for Integrated Security Appliance, Security Solution for Education and Unified Security, the 2007 Tomorrow’s Technology Today Award for Unified Security was rated Positive by Gartner in its Marketscope for SMB multi-function firewalls. Cyberoam has offices in the Woburn, MA, USA and India. For more information, please visit www.cyberoam.com

About Elitecore Technologies
Elitecore Technologies is the global provider of Cyberoam UTM appliances. Elitecore’s other divisions include Crestel Convergent Billing Solution that meets the voice, data, video billing and customer care requirements of Tier-1 service providers and 24online Billing and Bandwidth Management Solution for hotels, hotspots and Internet service providers. Elitecore has a strong R&D base and support center in India; it has sustained a healthy growth rate of over 75% since inception. For more information, please visit www.elitecore.com

Press Contact
L. K. Pathak
l.k.pathak@elitecore.com