Protecting Your Files from Malware When Stored or Being Transferred

I have an obsession. It is one born of experience. I hate malware. I get joy if I can at least give some visibility to things that make life a little less jolly for the bad guys. Clearly the stress of being a victim of malware creates cannot be healthy. This applies whether it is in regards to you sitting at home on your very personal computer. It is angst on steroids if you are an IT professional responsible for keeping the bad guys at bay for your entire organization. The bad actors can and should be stopped.

The problem is, whether this is personal but especially if you have major corporate responsibilities, no single antivirus program can give you the level of protection you need for a really enhanced level of peace of mind.

In a previous article, I introduced readers to OPSWAT and gave a brief description of its Metascan product. This server application provides a local and network programming interface and a variety of fully incorporated and licensed antivirus engines to provide comprehensive malware protection. It does so by employing multiple engine scanning technology that is accessible via the app.  IT risk management experts are presented with the ability to obtain the best of the best as part to include in their security architecture to protect and defend against malware’s destructive forces. Better yet, the solution is not intrusive. And, I mean this in the sense that despite all of the hard work Metascan performs it does not impede the speed of workflows—a significant consideration in enterprise settings.

OPSWAT came at all of this the hard way. Initial company growth was based on providing simplified and comprehensive SDKs that reduce costs and time necessary for testing and engineering teams. Obviously, this is not just sensitive work but the costs of having it tampered with are huge. That is why a one-size fits all antivirus solution was not enough. Hence, the company developed Metascan.

It is also worth noting that while Metascan is applicable for malware detection and prevention when information is moving across security domains, stored on file servers or uploaded to Web servers. It even is flexible and works well with enterprise file management and transfer capabilities. This is quite beneficial since in the enterprise files at rest tend not to stay at rest, and files in motion may have lots of destinations, e.g., if infected that can cause serious damage.

In this regard, OPSWAT recently formed a partnership with Attunity (News - Alert), a major managed file transfer companies, to integrate the two companies’ core competencies. The combined solution will serve the dual objectives of streamlining file sharing and protecting all information from end-to-end.

Given the stringent regulatory requirements of things like HIPPA and Sarbanes-Oxley (to name two big ones in the U.S.), where file transfers are frequent, the data is personal and the need to assure the integrity of transfers as well as to create and preserve an accurate history is table stakes, the combined solution is helpful since it enables easy deployment of virus and malware scanning within the process of transferring files end-to-end. This is true across partner portals, business users, business applications and even cloud ecosystems.

If you are like me and want to know more about how to protect your organization from the growing threats from malware, the free webinar titled, “Add More Depth to Your Defense: Maximize Malware Detection by Scanning Data with Multiple Antivirus Engines,” scheduled for Wednesday, December 12, 2012 at 2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST is an event you might not wish to miss.  Tony Berning, product manager, OPSWAT will be joining me to educate us all on best practices and to answer your questions.  

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