McAfee’s Avert Labs has found more new malware in 2007 than in all of 2005 and 2006 combined. Ok, we are not even 75% through 2007 and we have topped ‘05 & ‘06 combined. It is not getting better out there it is getting worse! All the security in the world is not worth a darn without good use and that comes from simple and effective management.

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How are we going to battle Malware?

Chris Bolin writes on the McAfee Insights Blog about this massive malware malady and McAfee’s cornerstone solution to the problem…management. Who is Chris, well he is McAfee’s EVP & CTO reporting directly to the CEO, so he should know things. What is ePO, it is ePolicy Orchestrator their management tool. As mentioned above i have a long history with ePO and have seen it grown from a 1.0 resource hog that could barely manage their AV product to a great cornerstone to their security strategy. If ePO does not manage one of their products, correlate the reporting data and all from a single console, it will soon.

Think of it as a good remote control. How many people only use the numbers, volume, power and up/down channel buttons? GO ahead, put your hands up. I bet if you knew how to use them all you would get a lot more out of your audio-visual experience. With malware popping up like college kids at an ESPN Gameday broadcast you better use all the firepower you have and ePO makes that a lot easier and reports on it all.

TheStreet.com has a great article about ePO and McAfee vs. Endpoint and Symantec (Endpoint is Symantec’s cornerstone solution and just recently released).

What is a customer to do?

Customers I talk to are the ones that really matter and they have to walk a line of balance. They cannot use a bazooka to swat a fly nor can they think a finger in the dike will save the day. Oh, and they have a million other issues to worry about and most of them help a company generate revenue, not fight off would be hacks, malware, spam and other nasties. At the end of the day, what is important is to work with your IT Security adviser to se what your policies are, make sure you are ok with that level of security and then match solutions until you find one you like.

That’s all.

Michael Rowles

IT Security Adviser