Preventative action

Trend Micro packages could ease antivirus administration.

CUPERTINO, CALIF. - Trend Micro last week unveiled a range of new services and product updates it hopes can help ease the administrative task of preventing and cleaning up after virus outbreaks.

Trend Micro is expanding its Enterprise Protection Strategy (EPS), a combination of products, services and centralized management tools that is designed to help IT managers thwart attacks from computer viruses and worms. The company introduced EPS in May.

Specifically, Trend Micro has retooled its full line of antivirus and content-filtering products to let customers manage desktop and server security policies from a central location. The new Central Management Console can be used to enforce five written policies, such as denying the right to access certain files and executables, or blocking network ports that might be deemed especially vulnerable during fast-moving virus or worm outbreaks.

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CUPERTINO, CALIF. - Trend Micro last week unveiled a range of new services and product updates it hopes can help ease the administrative task of preventing and cleaning up after virus outbreaks.

Trend Micro is expanding its Enterprise Protection Strategy (EPS), a combination of products, services and centralized management tools that is designed to help IT managers thwart attacks from computer viruses and worms. The company introduced EPS in May.

Specifically, Trend Micro has retooled its full line of antivirus and content-filtering products to let customers manage desktop and server security policies from a central location. The new Central Management Console can be used to enforce five written policies, such as denying the right to access certain files and executables, or blocking network ports that might be deemed especially vulnerable during fast-moving virus or worm outbreaks.

Corporate customers can create customized policies as well, says Steve Quane, Trend Micro product manager for enterprise products. The goal is to automate policy enforcement, when appropriate, and gain real-time work-flow-based virus reporting and eradication when a virus outbreak occurs.

"The old model of pattern-file matching is not sufficient," Quane says, alluding to the traditional approach that antivirus vendors take of capturing a new virus specimen and fashioning a signature-based means to block and eradicate it that depends on upgrading every desktop and server using antivirus software.

Now customers can sign up for one of many support plans, depending on the size and security needs of their organization. As part of the expansion, the EPS Outbreak Prevention Services have been broadened to encompass file, Web and messaging servers running on Solaris, Linux and Windows, and users connected via broadband connections from remote offices.

Previously, the Outbreak Prevention Services program worked only for messaging servers on the Windows platform, according to Trend Micro.

The Outbreak Prevention Services distribute information on developing virus outbreaks to Trend Micro customers before the release of a virus pattern file. That information can be used to modify network configurations and prevent or reduce infection.

In addition to strengthening its prevention services, Trend announced that it is beefing up its Damage Cleanup Services, which help companies recover after a virus outbreak. EPS customers now will receive attack-specific cleanup templates through the Damage Cleanup Server, which interacts with and repairs infected machines. The templates guide customers in removing remnants of attacks, including Trojan-horse programs, registry entries and hidden user accounts that could be used to launch a new attack after an initial attack is thwarted and damaged systems repaired.

Both Outbreak Prevention Services and Damage Cleanup Services will be sold to customers as annual per-seat subscriptions that will cost between $1 and $6, depending on the number of seats, Quane says.