Email messaging and Web security solutions specialist AppRiver announced its latest version of its SecureSurf product that defends against existing and emerging Web-based threats. The newest version features a critical threat notification capability that serves as an early warning system for network administrators.
To help ensure threats are mitigated as soon as they arise, critical threat notifications delivered to administrators flag detected traffic that could indicate a network has been compromised.
The platform, which combines proactive features such as firewalls, intrusion detection, anomaly alerting, log analysis, malware forensics and virus intelligence data, functions as a stand-alone product or can work in tandem with AppRiver secure messaging products.
“Cost and available expertise are just some of the challenges smaller organizations face when deploying a threat prevention strategy,” Joel Smith, AppRiver’s chief technology officer, told eWEEK. “What can make these problems worse for SMBs is the need to navigate through the maze of product marketing. There are a ton of vendors on the market, all with different messaging and each promoting their solution as best. But the truth is, buyers should be using layers of security technologies and business practices to make sure that data is protected in multiple ways.”
Other features include the company’s domain name system (DNS) engine, which captures information about bad URLs from a number of sources, enabling the service to protect customers from emerging insidious sites—among the security sources is AppRiver’s own spam protection service.
“It’s not OK to assume that a simple AV [antivirus] and firewall combo will provide effective protection, especially when threats exist within a trusted space, like inside your firewall,” Smith warned. “The best way to set up computer security is through layering. Even if one area of protection turns out to be 90 percent effective, the increasing layers will close all the holes.”
In addition, SecureSurf gives users the ability to force a safe search option with all major search engines, a feature that can be turned on or off from AppRiver’s customer portal, which is where businesses can also allow or block domains or top-level domains.
“Simple always scales,” Smith said. “Most organizations want to operate securely without being encumbered by overly complex security. Deploying layered, cloud-based security allows SMBs to take advantage of enterprise-grade security without the need for expensive onsite gear.”
A cloud-based solution, SecureSurf is updated more than 2,500 times a day to shield a network and employees from known and suspected attack types.
The company offers a 30-day free trial of SecureSurf and also provides 24/7 technical support in the form of Phenomenal Care from its U.S.-based team.
“Bad guys will continue to do bad stuff,” Smith said. “So there’s more to come. So much so that companies and press will get breach fatigue and the leaking of customer data will be an assumption and no longer a surprise.”