CHECK POINT REVOLUTIONIZES BOT PREVENTION

New Anti-Bot Software Blade Stops Bot Attacks on Every Gateway Using Advanced Discovery Technology
CALGARY, AB – October 6, 2011 – Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CHKP), the worldwide leader in securing the Internet, recently announced a new Anti-Bot Software Blade that protects against bots and APTs (Advance Persistent Threats). A bot is malicious software that enables cybercriminals to take over computers and execute illegal activities — such as stealing data, gaining access to unauthorized network resources, initiating Denial of Service (DoS) attacks or distributing spam. Bots are remotely controlled, typically disguised and operate without the users’ knowledge. Check Point’s new Anti-Bot Software Blade helps customers discover bots and prevent damages by blocking communication between infected hosts and remote operators. The new solution will be integrated into every gateway to provide businesses with multi-layered bot prevention against malware threats, with high traffic performance of over 40 Gbps — ensuring all channels of business communication remain secure.
Bots can create a dramatic increase in malware attacks, resulting in significant brand damage, data loss and financial costs to businesses. Botnets, such as Zeus and Mariposa, are infamous forms of malware used to execute cybercriminal activities, such as stealing banking information or executing DoS attacks. While there have been several highly publicized botnets, most attacks are hard to identify and can proliferate silently without an organization’s knowledge. Cybercriminals today are implementing a variety of stealthy techniques to avoid detection – often disabling PC antivirus software to hide their presence or leveraging encryption and alternative protocols to masquerade as legitimate traffic. Bots are also often used as tools in targeted attacks known as Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), such as Stuxnet and Operation Aurora.
Check Point’s new Anti-Bot Software Blade is designed to stop bots in their tracks by leveraging advanced technology that helps businesses discover, remediate and prevent future threats. The solution features Check Point’s Multi-tier ThreatSpect™, a unique detection engine that analyzes traffic on every gateway, identifies millions of outbreak types and discovers bots by correlating multiple risk factors — such as botnet patterns, remote operator hide-outs and attack behaviors. When a bot is identified, customers can quickly analyze their level of risk through intuitive dashboards that highlight bots and their business implications – such as data loss or an increase in fraudulent spam distribution. Check Point’s Anti-Bot solution provides administrators with the information they need to investigate infections with extensive forensic capabilities – helping security teams enforce multi-layered protection and accelerate remediation time.
“With bot toolkits for hackers selling today for the mere price of $500 and attacks costing businesses millions of dollars, it gives people insight into how big the problem has become. As seen with Mariposa, TDL-4 and Zeus, botnets are stealthy in nature and have the potential to infect millions of computers,” said Paul Comessotti, Check Point’s Canadian Regional Director. “While thousands of companies have already been targets of bots and APTs, businesses have the responsibility to stop it from spreading. Our new Anti-Bot solution is focused on bot prevention, empowering customers to quickly discover and block bots, before they can threaten security or the flow of business.”
In addition to Check Point’s advanced discovery technology, the Anti-Bot Software Blade revolutionizes bot prevention by providing customers with unique, multi-layered protection on every gateway by integrating with existing security protections, such as Intrusion Prevention, Antivirus & Anti-Malware and URL Filtering. For the first time in the industry, businesses benefit from a unified bot prevention solution, while delivering high traffic performance of up to 40 Gbps.
“Because bots are stealthy in nature and designed to manipulate the user, many companies aren’t aware when a computer is infected and their security team often lacks proper visibility into the threats that botnets create,” said Jon Oltsik, senior principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Check Point’s new Anti-Bot Software Blade is a promising offering for organizations looking for a solution that discovers bot infections across multiple layers of the network and can help them analyze their security risks in business terms.”
 
Key Features and Benefits of the Anti-Bot Software Blade:

  • Innovative and Multi-tier Bot Discovery — Check Point’s multi-tier ThreatSpect™ engine analyzes network traffic through the gateway for inline prevention, correlating multiple risk factors to uniquely discover bots. Customers benefit from instant bot intelligence with Check Point’s ThreatCloud™, a repository that pushes automatic threat updates to the Anti-Bot Software Blade, making it easy for businesses to enforce protection against the latest generation of threats.
  • Preemptive Protection — Helps businesses prevent bot damages by blocking communication between the infected machine and the command and control (C&C) servers before a cybercriminal can take control of the network.
  • Forensics and Reporting — Enables customers to analyze risk through malware reports and dashboards providing infection summaries.

Customers have the ability to drill-down into specific bot incidents, investigating infections with extensive forensic capabilities, and easily assess potential damages.

  • Integrated Prevention — The Anti-Bot Software Blade is designed to easily integrate with customers’ existing security protections, including: Intrusion Prevention that protects against emerging vulnerabilities; Antivirus & Anti-Malware that prevents file transfers of malicious viruses; and URL Filtering that blocks access to malicious sites. With an integrated, multi-layer solution, Check Point helps customers consolidate security, while protecting their business against bots across all layers of the network.
  • Central Management — Central policy management through the Software Blade Architecture™ simplifies management complexity with a holistic view of the network.

 
To learn more about how Check Point revolutionizes the fight against bots, listen to the webcast with Gil Shwed, founder, chairman and CEO of Check Point, as he introduces the new solution to the market: www.checkpoint.com.
“Our new Anti-Bot Software Blade is a breakthrough in bot prevention. We’re making it easy for customers to enforce Anti-Bot protection across all layers of the network and prevent their businesses from being exploited,” concluded Comessotti.
 
Additional Resources:

 
Availability
The Anti-Bot Software Blade will be available for purchase through the Check Point worldwide network of value-added resellers in the first quarter of 2012. To find a Check Point partner, visit: http://partners.us.checkpoint.com/partnerlocator/.

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