Did you know: Most Antivirus solutions are reactive to new viruses. 

Trojans, viruses, worms, and other types of malicious code continue to be the most serious threats facing corporations today. Organizations are increasingly asking for more proactive virus-detection techniques because of the rising number and severity of threats entering corporate networks.  Forward-looking companies are beginning to realize they cannot rely upon reactive signature-based antivirus (AV) technology alone. Real-time behavior analysis AV technologies, using heuristic algorithms, are needed to complement signature-based AV.  Many of today’s malware attacks are designed to evade these traditional signature based solutions by applying encryption, polymorphism (each sample looks different) fast-propagation techniques, blended malware, and other approaches to infect a large number of PCs before signatures are ready.

The sophisticated hackers of today are less concerned with destroying systems and knocking out Web servers. They realize that they can gain money from stealing confidential personal information and corporate data and selling it to spammers or those involved in organized crime and fraud. This profit-driven motivation is causing the number of attacks to increase in sophistication, frequency, and severity.

In light of the growing concerns over Web-based threats, demand is rising for solutions such as Web filtering, Web intrusion prevention, Web antivirus, and Web antispyware. However, the growing sophistication of Web-based threats emphasizes the need for real-time, proactive security to complement traditional security solutions based on developing a signature for each new identified known threat.

ESET, a 17-year-old company with U.S. headquarters in San Diego, California, is a global provider of security software for enterprises and consumers. The company’s flagship product is NOD32, an antivirus software system that provides real-time protection from known and unknown viruses, spyware, rootkits, and other malware.  NOD32 offers fast, advanced protection with small resource-utilization impact. It has garnered more Virus Bulletin 100 Awards than any other antivirus product. NOD32 is positioned as more than an antivirus product, however it’s designed to be a unified AntiThreat system that protects against viruses, spyware, adware, trojans, worms, rootkits, and phishing attacks.

NOD32 offers protection against threats from multiple vectors using the following modules:

• Antivirus MONitor (AMON) - an on-access (memory-resident) scanner, which automatically scans files before they’re accessed
• NOD32 - an on-demand scanner, which can be run manually on specific files or disk segments and can also be scheduled to run during off-peak times
• Internet MONitor (IMON) - a memory-resident scanner that runs on the Winsock level to prevent infected files from reaching the computer’s disks and scans Internet Web browsing traffic (HTTP) and incoming email via the POP3 protocol
• Email MONitor (EMON) - an auxiliary module for scanning incoming/outgoing emails via the MAPI interface, such as Microsoft Outlook as well as Microsoft Exchange Extension compliant mail clients
• Document MONitor (DMON) - a module that utilizes the proprietary Microsoft API for scanning Microsoft Office documents (including Internet Explorer)

At the heart of the NOD32 system is ESET’s proactive ThreatSense technology, which reportedly stops 93% of zero-day threats before they’re even released. The optimized engine delivers superior detection and fast scanning with minimal performance impact.  Written mostly in assembly language, NOD32 has won numerous awards for the fastest performance of any antivirus application. NOD32 is up to 34 times faster than rival products, according to the independent Virus Bulletin.

NOD32 is also designed to conserve resources in memory and on disk, leaving more for business critical applications. The installer is only 11MB, and the application consumes an average 23MB in memory (this fluctuates with changes to the detection technology). ThreatSense updates, which include advanced heuristics logic and signatures, are usually between 20KB and 50KB. 

NOD32 is also flexible and configurable, with centralized management and reporting functionality.  Businesses and organizations with larger, distributed networks can use the Remote Administrator to centrally deploy, install, monitor, and manage thousands of NOD32 workstations and servers. The broad product platform protects Windows, Linux, Novell, and MS DOS machines.

Please see attached whitepaper on why ESET is a leader in antivirus solutions!