Days before introducing it formally at the RSA technological security conference in San Francisco, Hewlett-Packard announced they have a new software product aimed at virus spread containment.
Called Virus Throttle, the package is touted as a product that can help businesses detect, contain, and slow down the rate of virus attacks inside information technology infrastructure cores.
"If IT systems were 'intelligent' enough to automatically detect and shut down attacks before they spread, administrators would spend less time and money trying to catch up," said HP vice president and chief technology officer for security office and services Tony Redmond, announcing the product. "At HP, we're focusing our security research and development and working with our industry partners to come up with new solutions to make IT infrastructures more intelligent and help our customers address their biggest IT security challenges."
Virus Throttle is designed with a "non-traditional approach"—detecting abnormal, virus-like behavior and slowing down the number of different connections infected machines can make until administrators can learn if the trouble is indeed viral, HP said.
The product is designed to monitor network connection requests and detect abnormal activity usually associated with viruses or worms trying to spread themselves within networks. "The faster a virus tries to spread itself, the faster Virus Throttle reacts - and it reacts automatically, typically in milliseconds, without waiting for human attention," HP said.
If an actual worm or virus is detected positively, the company added, Virus Throttle will hamper its ability to spread by blocking it from making network connections and flagging its presence to system administrators whose job is then to remove the bugs from the systems.
