Welcome to the first edition of Trustco InFocus. Our quarterly newsletter will cover recent technology news and insight into a selection of critical IT areas.

This edition focuses on IT Security – an area of concern to businesses large and small. A whole industry has grown up around helping companies defend against these attacks, but how do you choose the most appropriate solution? At Trustco we believe in bringing you solutions that will do the job – at great prices and with excellent service. We constantly monitor technology vendors for products that will help you enhance your business, reduce costs and minimise administration requirements.

Our features in this edition cover:

• Removing security risks through expert analysis of Internet facing hosts
• Trends in spyware & malware over the web
• Simplifying security by combining solutions into Unified Threat Management

We’re excited to announce two new initiatives for 2007, providing you with the tools to make your life easier and to minimise the cost of acquiring new technology.

Introducing Trustco InView, the next generation e-commerce for high level procurement. InView provides Trustco customers all the benefits of e-commerce but without the disadvantages. You still get the personal assistance and support of your account manager at Trustco, while InView enables you to access and review your history of quotes and sales orders at the touch of a button. Here are just some of the features available:

• Get on-demand visibility of all your quotes
• Request price updates or lower prices on any outstanding quote
• Label quotes as favourites and add comments for your internal use
• Re-print or re-email quotes at any time
• Keep everything centralised and easily accessible by year or by quarter
• Export summary data for internal reporting

InView links directly to our internal systems, so you will see changes as we make them, while any online requests from you will be actioned with virtually no delay.

If you would like to gain access to Trustco InView please email us with the password you would like to assign for your company. We'll let you know when your account has been activated. Follow this link to take you to the system.

Trustco Advantage
Become a Trustco Major Account in 2007 (minimum £250K annual spend) and receive:

• Annual rebates
• Personalised dashboards
• Feature rich enhancements to InView
• Personalised client integration of business systems and a whole lot more

To find out more and to request a 'Trustco Value Proposition' or 'Major Account Plan' presentation please send us an email here. We'll get in touch to sort out the details.

Click here for the full story

Click here for the full story

Operating systems and applications can contain vulnerabilities or mis-configurations that allow an attacker to compromise Internet facing hosts, and possibly gain access to internal networks. A proactive analysis identifies issues before they become security incidents.

Interrogate External is a new service offered by Trustco that manually scans specified host systems across the Internet. Two options are available:

• A vulnerability assessment designed to identify, but not exploit, potential vulnerabilities
• A full penetration test to identify exploits and leverage them to determine further issues

No permanent harm or modification occurs. Manual testing provides intelligent analysis not available when an automated scan is utilised.

Scope
Vulnerability Assessment is essential for critical web-facing systems such as routers, firewalls, web servers and email servers. It identifies:

• Vulnerabilities that exist and may be exploited in order to gain unauthorised access to the internal network or key servers
• Weaknesses present in commercially released operating systems or applications

Trustco brings this service to you through the highly experienced and qualified Integralis S3 team, which holds CHECK Green Light status from CESG and the Payment Card Industry Approved Scanning Vendor certification.

Business Benefits

This service is an ideal starting point for providing an assessment of the effectiveness of deployed network security. Conducting a proactive analysis reduces overall risk and lowers the costs of responding to incidents. The use of human analysis, interpretation and attention to detail, minimises the risk of false positives and other erroneous information. It also highlights vulnerabilities that automated tools miss, ensuring results are accurate and comprehensive.

Click here to find out more about this service.

Among the report’s findings is that the convergence of threats dominates the web security landscape. In 2006, ScanSafe blocked 254% more instances of spyware and saw 32% fewer web viruses than it did in 2005. However, the number of new unique web viruses continues to grow and mutate to pose new threats.

“Not only did we see relentless growth in spyware throughout the year, but we saw that it is increasingly harbouring more sinister payloads,” said Dan Nadir, vice president of product strategy at ScanSafe. “We also noticed a trend towards web viruses being leveraged to spread spyware. The net result is that the line between spyware and web viruses has become so blurred that malware is the only appropriate term to describe the ever increasing permutations of web based threats.”

Other key findings from the report include:

• Internet searches increasingly expose companies to risk, while impacting productivity. One in five Internet searches generates links to malware or inappropriate content. Search engines have become a significant gateway for web threats.
• Protection from zero-hour virus threats – those that appear before an anti-virus signature is available — is more critical than ever. New web viruses now outnumber existing web viruses and the zero-hour risk increases.
• Managing web content accessed by employees remains a major concern for corporate IT administrators. Web chat and IM accounted for the largest single percentage (15%) of web filtering content blocks in 2006. This trend reflects the rise of ‘presence communications’ like IM, blogs and wikis.
• Hackers get personal. As operating systems become more ‘locked down’ with built-in features to make installing unsolicited software more difficult, malware authors are using social engineering tactics to help fuel threat propagation. 26% of web viruses blocked by ScanSafe used some form of social engineering to trick users into installing malware.  
• Financially-motivated web viruses rise by 310%. These attacks are designed to steal financial information from users. Over 84% of ScanSafe's customer base would have been exposed to this type of malware, had they not deployed web Malware Scanning. Furthermore, over 65% of web virus payloads were intended to achieve some direct financial benefit.

“The nature and types of threats are proliferating so quickly and becoming so sophisticated that the web has become one of the fastest growing threat vectors. The key lesson is that you cannot simply rely on periodically updated databases of suspect URLs or anti-virus engines alone to protect your network from web threats.” said Nadir

By scanning all content seen across its network in real-time, profiling the characteristics and behaviour of the code, building intelligence that is shared across the global ScanSafe network, and checking against leading signature-based systems – ScanSafe can offer a superior level of threat protection.

The ScanSafe Annual Global Threat Report reviews web-based threats as seen by ScanSafe’s leading security platform, Outbreak Intelligence™ and gathered from ScanSafe’s unique position ‘in-the-cloud,’ providing insight into the nature and impact of the security risks actually faced by businesses, as well as analysis of their behaviour. It is based on threat intelligence gathered from ScanSafe’s range of services - web Malware Scanning, web Filtering and IM Control as well as research on search threats.

Click here to download the full report which discusses web-based security trends in depth, indicating new and evolving attacks that organisations should be aware of. For more information on ScanSafe click here.

The evolution of IT security
Networks – and the Internet – have evolved over time, rather than having been designed within an integrated process. As new iterations have developed, so too have the vulnerabilities and subsequent threats to the data they carry. It is therefore not surprising that the network security business has evolved in the same manner – each step forward closing off another set of vulnerabilities.

A range of solutions has built up – firewalls, intrusion detection, authentication, anti-virus, anti-spam, web filtering, anomaly detection and web application firewalls are all actively managed by businesses throughout the world.

Though these technologies fix a broad range of problems, they are not integrated, they have different management console and they don’t work together. This all adds up to a situation that is expensive to manage, while vulnerabilities are easy to miss due to overall complexity.
The primary reason for this increased exposure to attack is through new techniques of “blended attacks”. The crime syndicates break down attacks into different components and when the information packets pass through the various security devices, they are not seen as malicious and therefore allowed through.

The piecemeal approach of implementing separate security devices is no longer viable. It does not provide the level of protection required and represents spiralling security costs. A new concept, Unified Threat Management (UTM), consolidates existing defence mechanisms into one platform. By doing this the packets of information that hold attacks are fully analysed in context and against the whole range of attack vectors. The results are correlated and decisions made as to the level of threat – and what actions to take.

Given the competitive nature of the IT security market, costs for switching to a UTM solution may be comparable to upgrading existing devices. Even a 15-20% increase in year-one cost for a new solution may well be worth it. You'll save at least that much time in not having to troubleshoot different equipment when you have a problem, and your protection will be broader.

Offerings
Fortinet is a pioneer in the UTM business, providing solutions to businesses large and small – more than 20,000 businesses in total. The company offers an array of multi-threat security solutions that help businesses meet their security challenges and enable a safe and clean communications environment. Fortinet is the only company who has built its comprehensive security platform from the ground up to provide multiple layers of threat protection and management. This translates into better security through integration, a "future-proof" solution that can easily scale with business requirements.

More Information
For more information about UTM devices, read this whitepaper which discusses multi-layer security platforms; and this information about Fortinet.

For more information about Trustco or any of our technology solutions,
please contact us on 0870 160 1505 or visit this page for alternative contact details.

Trustco Plc is a leading provider of Servers, Storage, Communication & Security Solutions from the very best vendors. Our focus on dedicated specialist account management along with technical resources make us the supplier of choice for a wide variety of businesses across the UK. Our ability to traverse the direct, distribution & reseller channels enable us to retain our competitive price advantage and keep lead times down to a minimum without any compromise on quality of after sales care. Visit www.trustco.co.uk for further information.

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