Bit9 Delivers Three Industry Firsts In The Fight Against Advanced Threats And Malware

PRESS RELEASE

Bit9, the global leader in Advanced Threat Protection, today introduced three industry-first breakthroughs to protect organizations large and small against advanced threats and malware. Version 7.0 of the Bit9 solution delivers trust-based security that goes far beyond traditional whitelisting and application control. The industry firsts and enhancements in v7.0 include:

The FIRST security solution to deliver IT- and cloud-driven trust: Bit9's latest release enables IT organizations to create policies that leverage the trust ratings in Bit9's cloud-based Global Software Registry&trade (GSR), the world's largest software reputation database. This option enables end users to run software without involvement from IT as long as the software has a sufficiently high trust rating from Bit9. When combined with the ability to create specific IT-driven trust policies, this cuts administrative overhead and end-user impact by up to 40%, reducing both cost and effort.

The FIRST trust-based security solution optimized for virtualized environments: Many organizations believe virtual environments are inherently secure because they can be reimaged each day. That fallacy creates a major security gap because 85% of advanced attacks do their damage within minutes, according to the Verizon 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report. Bit9's new features eliminate repeated disk scans, multiple initializations of cloned virtual machines, problematic gold image updates, and other issues that plague traditional application control products in virtualized environments. This new release delivers the highest security, performance and reliability for all virtualized environments including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), server virtualization and terminal services/session virtualization.

The FIRST trust-based security solution with the features, scalability and integration to protect the largest enterprises: With support for up to 250,000 endpoints per Bit9 server, v7.0 is the first trust-based security solution that scales to meet the needs of organizations of any size. New roles-based access control makes it easy and effective to administer within existing team structures and groups. Through open APIs and prebuilt integrations, Bit9's solution also interoperates with existing security solutions, including SEIMS, log management systems, software delivery tools, patch management products, and ticketing systems.

ENHANCED server security: Servers are the target of advanced threats because they hold an organization's intellectual property. Bit9 delivers enhanced memory protection, file integrity monitoring and device control to provide a single trust-based security solution across all enterprise systems--servers, desktops and laptops.

In the September 2012 report by Forrester Research, Inc., entitled "Application Control: An Essential Endpoint Security Component," authors Chenxi Wang and Chris Sherman wrote of the need for a new approach to security:

"It's no mystery that antivirus (AV) technologies are fighting a losing battle against an increasingly sophisticated malware threat landscape. Attackers often penetrate user endpoints with new malware that eludes the AV detection. As a result, security professionals must consider a different approach, one that doesn't rely solely on an increasingly hard-to-manage signature blacklist. In its various forms, application control delivers a much-needed value proposition for endpoint protection."

Organizations of all types and sizes use Bit9's trust-based security approach as a key element in dealing with all aspects of advanced threats and malware, including incident response, forensics, detection and protection.

Version 7.0 is available worldwide immediately.

Bit9 today also announced the new Bit9 Managed Administrative Service (see news release), which enables organizations to outsource to Bit9 the day-to-day work of administering trust-based security, while retaining overall control of their corporate security policies.

Bit9 Executive Quote: Brian Hazzard, vice president of product management

"The industry has been looking for a breakthrough to make application control mainstream. With v7.0, Bit9 delivers that breakthrough with the only real-time endpoint sensor and recorder, the lowest administrative effort and user impact, the highest level of security and support for virtualization, and proven reliability and scalability. Nearly 1,000 organizations worldwide operate securely and productively because they rely on Bit9's trust-based security platform to protect their IP when other security solutions can't get the job done."

Analyst Quotes:

"Today's cyberthreats have proliferated to an extent that makes a number of legacy techniques to defense impractical at best, ineffective at worst. Application control offers a more feasible alternative based on permitting the known rather than blocking a virtually endless variety of unknowns. Bit9's innovative trust-based solution embraces these values and complements them with scalability and reduced user impact that makes application control a viable strategy in the enterprise." – Scott Crawford, Managing Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates

"Stopping today's sophisticated and highly targeted threats is beyond the means of traditional, reactive security controls such as antivirus. What's needed is a way to focus on allowing trusted software to run so malicious files cannot impact the network. Bit9's new release provides organisations with the ammunition they need to guard against advanced threats. It also extends application control to virtualised environments, which are increasingly common and which provide a stepping stone to the benefits offered by the cloud." – Fran Howarth, senior analyst, Bloor Research

"Bit9 is a great example of what ESG calls advanced malware detection/prevention (AMD/P) technologies that are supplementing and sometimes replacing antivirus software in enterprises because AV can't always detect or block advanced persistent threats, such as zero-day attacks, that are the weapon of choice for cybercriminals. With v7.0, Bit9 delivers a compelling series of capabilities that combine the power of IT- and cloud-driven trust to protect endpoints and servers--including virtualized machines--and offer scalability to protect the assets of small companies to the largest enterprises in a unique way." – Jon Oltsik, senior principal analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group

"Large organizations demand enterprise-level protection tools, and Bit9's very different, 'only allow trusted software' approach to application control, clearly makes it stand out from the crowd. Product scalability enables the solution to protect up to 250,000 servers and endpoints from a single Bit9 deployment. This looks to be an impressive and straightforward product. It is an integrated offering and interoperable with existing security tools, and as far as I can tell it's the only Windows-certified solution operating in this particular space." – Andrew Kellett, Principal Analyst, Software – IT Solutions, Ovum

"By 2015, more than 50% of enterprises will have instituted 'default deny' policies that restrict the applications users can install." (Gartner, Predicts 2012: Sophisticated Attacks, Complex IT Environments and Increased Risks Demand New Approaches to Infrastructure Protection, Ray Wagner, et al, November 29, 2011)

"With its whitelisting technology Bit9 says it was successfully able to stop the virus we now know as Flame before it was recognised or even named; this underlines the power of only allowing trusted software to execute. Cloud-driven trust policy controls, as offered by Bit9, offer such protection with a low-level of administration effort and user disruption." -- Bob Tarzey, Analyst and Director at Quocirca

About Bit9

Bit9, the global leader in Advanced Threat Protection, protects the intellectual property (IP) of the world's leading brands with innovative, trust-based security solutions that detect and prevent sophisticated malware and cyberthreats. Bit9 stops advanced persistent threats (APTs) by combining real-time sensors, cloud-based software reputation services, continuous monitoring and trust-based application control and whitelisting. Bit9 is the only company to stop both Flame and the malware that caused the RSA breach. For more information, visit http://www.bit9.com, follow us on Twitter @Bit9, Facebook and Google+, or call +1 617-393-7400.