Trend Micro Completes Acquisition of Mobile Armor
Trend Micro announced that it has completed the acquisition of Mobile Armor as of close of business on February 1, 2011.
The acquisition agreement between Trend Micro and Mobile Armor was announced on November 29, 2010 and expands Trend Micro’s data protection portfolio, extending its encryption offerings to span from endpoints all the way into the public cloud.
The new Trend Micro Endpoint Encryption offering- formerly known as the Mobile Armor Data Armor Suite- delivers the broadest coverage of any solution in the market. One centrally managed encryption solution includes full disk and file/folder capability, delivers software-based encryption and support for self-encrypting drives, and covers PCs, Windows Smartphones and Removable Media. In addition to this breadth of capability in a single solution, pre-defined policies make it simple to set policies while robust reporting readily proves compliance with those policies.
“We are pleased to complete the acquisition of Mobile Armor and welcome our new employees, partners, and customers to the Trend Micro family,” said Steve Quane, chief product officer at Trend Micro. “Trend Micro is helping government agencies, enterprise customers, SMBs and consumers around the globe protect their data whether stored on a local PC or mobile device or in a virtualized environment or public cloud.”
Trend Micro and Mobile Armor voluntarily notified and requested review of the acquisition by the US Government Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), and the CFIUS raised no objections to the transaction. CFIUS is an inter-agency committee of the U.S. Government authorized to review transactions that could result in control of a U.S. business in order to determine the effect of such transactions on the national security of the United States. Chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury, CFIUS includes representatives from a number of U.S. Government departments and agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, Defense and State.
Accordingly, Trend Micro Endpoint Encryption is available to organizations around the world seeking to ensure the privacy of sensitive data on their corporate devices of all kinds.
Trend Micro #1 in Worldwide Server Security Market Share
Trend Micro cloud and virtualization security leadership further validated by strength of its server security market position
Trend Micro is leading the worldwide market for corporate endpoint server security with an estimated 22.9 percent market share, according to a recently published report by IDC. The “Worldwide Endpoint Security 2010-2014 Forecast” November 2010, market analysis report identifies server security as a new sub-segment of the endpoint security market.
Revenue was up 13.2 percent in the third quarter from global server sales, according to the IDC research firm. With shipments of virtualized servers growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14 percent from 2009 to 2014, “IDC expects that this robust growth in server virtualization will continue through 2014 as datacenter adoption is increasingly considered mainstream in mature economies and as organizations in emerging regions look for data center efficiencies while they rapidly increase their server investments over the period”.
As more enterprises use virtual servers, they will be searching for security solutions that will protect the server hosting the virtualized environment; the hypervisor; and shield the virtual servers from malware and hacker attacks. Read more
Trend Micro Enhances Small Worry Free Business Security 7: Business Flagship Line With Data Loss Prevention and Mac Client Protection
Small businesses face an increasingly dynamic and targeted threat landscape: Not only are there 1.5 new pieces of malware being created every second, cybercriminals are aggressively preying upon smaller businesses that are often strapped for IT resources and security expertise at a growing rate.
Trend Micro made a commitment to solving small business security needs six years ago when it first introduced its Worry-Free product line to the market. Today’s announcement of Worry Free Business Security 7 continues that security promise and incorporates new features that address the ways small businesses are changing, as well as addressing an evolving, more aggressive threat landscape.
What’s new in Worry-Free Business Security 7
NEW – Email data loss prevention: Nearly 60 percent of all reported infections involve data-stealing malware, which is no surprise since loss of information is ranked among the top three concerns for small businesses. The email DLP feature enables small businesses to keep information private by discovering, monitoring and preventing accidental or deliberate loss of confidential information through email. Read more
Trend Micro Global Threat Report: Europe Dominates in Spam Growth, While North America Leads in Malicious URLs
Global research network identifies threat trends during the first half of 2010, and the industries affected, along with advice for protecting consumers and businesses.
During the first half of 2010, Europe sped through the spam-generating fast-lane, bypassing North and South Americas, and Asia-Pacific to earn the “Top Producer of Spam” title. Based on the Trend Micro semi-annual 2010 threat report, spam continued to grow between January and June 2010, with a brief lull during April. Despite common perception, porn consists of only 4 percent of all spam. Commercial, scams-based and health/medical categories make up 65 percent of the spam generated throughout the world, with HTML spam being the most commonly used technique by spammers.
First half of 2010: Web-based threat trends
According to the report, malicious URLs increased from 1.5 billion in January to over 3.5 billion in June. North America sourced the most malicious URLs, while Asia-Pacific had the most victims of malware infections. The top URLs blocked by Trend Micro were adult websites, as well as sites that hosted malicious variants such as IFRAME code, TROJ_AGENT, and JS_DLOADR.ATF. Read more
Trend Micro Threat Research Report: 9 Million ZeuS attacks blocked by Trend Micro in the last 6 months
Trend Micro has seen a recent rise in average of around 300 unique ZeuS samples per day, according to a recent threat report that examines the Eastern European criminal enterprise behind one of the world’s most prolific crimeware kits designed for wholesale monetary theft. Trend Micro witnessed more than 13,000 unique ZeuS samples within January 2010 alone.
“ZeuS is nothing new – we’ve seen it at work for years. But what’s alarming is the recent rise in attacks,” said Raimund Genes, CTO of Trend Micro. “It’s one of the most notorious security threats to Internet users and Trend Micro is fighting back: In the last 6 months, we’ve blocked about 9 million ZeuS attacks and we’re not stopping.”
Latest developments
For the greater part of last year, Trend Micro discovered that ZeuS variants were also distributed via the Avalanche botnet – a fast-flux botnet — which sent spammed messages en masse. The spam runs imitated several popular social networking sites. The cybercriminals behind the operations even tried to copy email messages and Web sites of U.S. government institutions like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Social Security Administration (SSA), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Another significant feature that was recently added to the current ZeuS versions is the “Jabber” functionality. Jabber is an open source instant messaging protocol and JabberZeuS is a ZeuS variant where the credentials stolen during a banking session are relayed in real-time to the ZeuS botmaster via instant messages so she can immediately log in to the same account undetected using the same credentials as the victim.
ZeuS-BREDOLAB connections
According to Trend Micro research, BREDOLAB and ZeuS are individual tools that are freely available in the cybercriminal underground. Their uses complement each other, which is why they’re often seen together. While ZeuS specializes in stealing information from infected systems, BREDOLAB enables cybercriminal organizations to deliver any kind of software to its victims. Once a user’s machine is infected by BREDOLAB, it will receive regular malware updates the same way it receives software updates from the user’s security vendor.
Poor economy fueling ZeuS
The success of ZeuS is partly attributed to cybercriminals’ ability to recruit money mules that move their stolen money around through bogus work-from-home scams. Given the current economic situation in the United States–with millions of people out of work–cybercriminals know they have a high success rate in recruiting accomplices.
Work-from-home recruits are instructed to provide bank account information, which the cybercriminals use to access compromised online bank accounts and to wire money amounting to less than US$10,000 to money mules, indicating that they are fully aware of banking alert limits. The money mules then wire the money back to Eastern Europe.
How can companies protect themselves?
Designed to quietly steal banking information and other sensitive data, the ZeuS botnet can turn itself off to remain undetected. Trend Micro offers the most advanced technology and expertise to immediately eliminate botnet attacks. The Trend Micro(TM) Smart Protection Network(TM) provides instant, real-time protection and is the infrastructure behind Trend Micro products. It correlates more than 20 billion emails, Web sites and files a day, using that data to immediately identify and respond to the latest emerging threats.
Trend Micro Recommends
– Home & Home Office Products Trend Micro(TM) Internet Security
– Small Business Products Worry-Free(TM) Business Security Standard/Advanced and Services
– Medium Business/Enterprise OfficeScan(TM) Client/Server Edition Threat Management Services InterScan(TM) Messaging Hosted Security InterScan(TM) Web Security
ZeuS and other bots now control more than 100 million computers worldwide. If you’re concerned that info-stealing malware is on your network, sign up for a free Security Threat Assessment today.
For the full research report, visit: http://us.trendmicro.com/us/trendwatch/research-and-analysis/white-papers-and- articles/index.html