Security Response

Have you ever noticed how movies tend to come in waves? A few years ago it seemed like every action movie had a space theme; then the following year the big new movies featured some kind of natural disaster. This past summer it seemed like every other movie was in 3-D. Technology, as we all know, has waves too, and the security industry is no different. For example, recently there has been a lot of talk about reputation-based security and suddenly it seems like every vendor is claiming to have some type of reputation technology. But, not all technologies are created equal, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to look at what makes Symantec’s reputation-based technology so very different.

Why is a new approach needed?

Two fairly recent trends have had a negative impact on the effectiveness of traditional approaches to security. First, many of today’s threats are highly polymorphic—they are able to easily hide because nearly every instance of...