IMlogic offers messaging virus filter

With viruses, worms and malware targeting instant messaging, IMlogic last week released software designed to thwart infection and the spread of attacks.

The company's Real-Time Threat Protection System (RTTPS) is a proactive filtering system for detecting, deflecting and eliminating malicious content sent through IM. Company officials call it "predictive software" aimed at choking off fast spreading IM viruses.

RTTPS features a traffic filter that watches for anomalies or patterns that could signal the work of a virus, such as rapid-fire sending of messages. It also looks at content and embedded links, and scores them against a reputation engine.

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With viruses, worms and malware targeting instant messaging, IMlogic last week released software designed to thwart infection and the spread of attacks.

The company's Real-Time Threat Protection System (RTTPS) is a proactive filtering system for detecting, deflecting and eliminating malicious content sent through IM. Company officials call it "predictive software" aimed at choking off fast spreading IM viruses.

RTTPS features a traffic filter that watches for anomalies or patterns that could signal the work of a virus, such as rapid-fire sending of messages. It also looks at content and embedded links, and scores them against a reputation engine.

"We have identified a business need for IM," says Kyle Getz, director of IT for The Seattle Times. "But we also have a complete set of information security policies for the technology that we use." Getz says those policies are currently being revised to address IM. As part of the effort, the company is in the process of rolling out RTTPS to guard against viruses and worms.

"Our goal is to minimize attacks and this tool seems to be the best at catching what is out there," he says.

RTTPS is a module that works in conjunction with IMlogic's IM Manager, which lets users secure, log and audit traffic generated by IM clients from AOL, Yahoo, Jabber, Microsoft, and IBM/Lotus. IMlogic competes with FaceTime and Akonix to monitor and manage IM traffic.

While RTTPS runs on the corporate network, it also provides information to the centralized IMlogic Threat Center. Information on potential threats and malicious links collected by the network of corporate RTTPS users is evaluated and aggregated at the Threat Center and fed back to RTTPS for use with its filtering engine, much like updates to anti-virus engines.

The Predictive Threat Filter uses heuristic filters to identify potential threats and block them. The reputation engine evaluates the potentially threatening content and provides a score based on a perceived level of risk

The software also can be configured to redirect hyperlinks and URLs in IM messages to an internal server to warn users of potential risks.

The software also includes white list controls to allow certain activity. "Some users are worried about false positives because they don't want to hinder or shutdown IM for a false positive," says Jon Sakoda, CTO of IMlogic. Sakoda says RTTPS also includes IT administrative controls for defining a quarantine, which can be to notify end users of a malicious URL, block the URL, lock out the user or shutdown IM completely.

IMlogic RTTPS integrates with IMlogic IM Manager 7.0 and 7.5. The 7.5 version supports monitoring and analysis of RTTPS traffic directly from IM Manager's administrative dashboard.

The software is available now and pricing starts at $10 per user per year.

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