Today we face a global malware epidemic from which no organization is immune. In fact, millions of organizations of all sizes are impacted. While cybercrime techniques become more sophisticated, dynamic and targeted, the security industry struggles to keep pace as it tries, unsuccessfully, to extend legacy database solutions. This leaves organizations vulnerable to damaging malware attacks, which can result in noncompliance issues, financial loss and expensive reputation damage control.

A Growing Underground Economy

Cybercrime has escalated more than 400% since 2007¹

As an industry, Cybercrime is experiencing unprecedented growth. What started with disparate hackers seeking notoriety evolved rapidly into specialized, organized businesses that steal sensitive information for profit. Because cyber-attacks are lucrative and easy to perpetrate, criminals remain highly motivated to find new ways to carry out their attacks.

This underground economy continues to thrive for three main reasons:

1. Success: Modern malware is so sophisticated that it evades most security systems easily.
2. Ease: Exploit kits make it easy for almost anyone to create, launch and monitor an attack.
3. Low risk: Cybercriminals are able to carry out attacks with little to no risk of being caught.

What Is the Malware Gap?

Most security solutions block only 40% of malware, leaving a 60% gap in protection

Much of the traffic on enterprise networks is now Web traffic, and this is growing with the popularity of cloud computing and Web 2.0 applications. Most security solutions were developed as much as 20 years ago to protect from known threats on suspicious websites. That has all changed. Now, cybercriminals target legitimate websites for their attacks.

• 92% of attacks originate from the Web²
• 84% of all infected websites are legitimate, trusted sites³

This evolution in cybercrime has rendered most security solutions ineffective against dynamic and targeted malware. Solutions that were satisfactory three years ago, such as antivirus and firewalls, are now outdated. This is evidenced by the fact that URL filtering, antivirus, firewalls and other reputation and database-driven solutions block less than 40% of malware, leaving organizations unprotected from the 60% that evades detection. This malware gap gives cybercriminals easy entry into organizations' networks and data.

Real Threats, Real Damage

Conservative estimates put losses at $100 billion, with some research reporting losses up to $1 trillion⁴

Attacks on organizations are costly, not only in terms of money lost, but in the resulting damage to a company's brand and reputation. For example, recent attacks on a number of UK banks using the Zeus v3 Trojan (identified by M86 Security), and revelations that another large bank was the victim of hackers (Project Aurora), prove that cybercriminals target large institutions for sources of illicit income.

Furthermore, based on the results of benchmark tests M86 Security performed at a U.S. Fortune 5 bank, the annual cost of re-imaging computers to rid them of malware was approximately $3 million. It's a very real, very damaging problem.

¹Detica report, 2011; OECD, IDC, 2004, 2010, FBI/IC3 cybercrime statistics, 2011, FBI 2005
²M86 Labs, 2010
³M86 Labs, 2010
⁴The Global Cybercrime Industry: Economic, Institutional and Strategic Perspectives by Nir Kshetri

M86 Security is the only security company that protects against known and unknown (zero-day) threats in true real time. Our intelligent Secure Web Gateway solution uses layered technologies, including dynamic and static page analysis, virtual patching and dynamic Web repair, to provide the most accurate malware protection in the industry. These technologies protect our customers effectively, dynamically and proactively from the modern, sophisticated malware that evades other solutions.

Why Are M86 Security Technologies More Effective than Competitive Solutions?

• Proactive versus reactive
  Solutions such as anti-virus and URL filtering rely on a database that must be updated before it can protect users. With these reactive techniques, organizations gamble that their security vendor will find the attack before their users do. Our technology is able to detect new and targeted attacks without having already seen the attack. This is because it does not rely on signatures or databases; instead it analyzes code on a Web page and determines its intent in milliseconds, so malware gets blocked proactively—before it can reach a user.
• True real-time code analysis versus real-time classification
  Rapid crosschecking of content against a list of known malware is completely different than scanning and analyzing code in real time. M86 Security's real-time static and dynamic code analysis technology actually blocks new malware milliseconds before it can execute, whereas our competitors compare code against a database quickly, but cannot actually prevent malware in real time.
• Accuracy versus "best guess" methods
  Other solutions look at individual pieces of code on a page to identify malware, but this will not find cross vector attacks, which use two or more separate pieces of code that work together to execute an attack. M86 catches malicious code that is hidden in cross vector attacks by correlating the individual Web components to provide the most accurate means of malicious code detection.