Is Your Small Business Secure?

A new Forrester
report
predicts that 40 percent of small and medium businesses will significantly
increase their spending on IT security technologies in 2010. Why the sudden
increase?  As the population of web-users grows, so will the number
of cybercrimes, costing business
owners both time and money. And, cybercriminals have
found a rich, new
hunting ground
: small businesses' bank accounts.

Yet many cash strapped companies, with no dedicated IT
staff, are still un-protected. According to a Dell study of 1,425 small and
medium businesses worldwide:

  • 59 percent of
    respondents said they have no endpoint protection (i.e. software that combines
    antivirus with advanced threat protection technologies such as desktop firewall
    and intrusion prevention for laptops, desktops and servers)
  • 7 percent do not back
    up their desktop PCs, leaving their important information at risk
  • 33 percent lack even
    basic antivirus protection

Worry-Free Business Security Services

To help small and
medium businesses address these vulnerabilities, Dell has united with Trend Micro,
global leader in Internet content security.
Trend Micro's expertise is in security solutions that protect your information
without slowing down your computer systems. And Dell is sharing its unique
customer insights — gained from 5.4M interactions with customers
everyday — to help influence future
product development.

Using these
insights, Dell and Trend Micro will launch a Dell version of its just announced
Worry-Free Business
Security Services
that give small businesses anytime, anywhere
web-based protection. Today, customers can buy the on-premise
Trend Micro Worry-Free solution from Dell's
Software & Peripherals
site or sales team, and can choose Trend Micro
Internet Security as part of their custom Dell configuration.  More
details to come later this year on the exclusive Dell/Trend Micro Worry-Free
Business Security Services offering and additional security solutions from
Dell. So, stay tuned.

In the
meantime, here are some of the new features found in the
latest small-business solution from Trend Micro:

  • Smart Scan, a scanning approach unlike conventional security. Smart Scan lightens the
    memory load of computers by storing the majority of security technology on the
    Web security server maintained by Trend Micro rather than each computer so
    customers get faster scans and updates, threats are detected and removed
    immediately, and users don't need to worry about large file updates while
    traveling.
  • Smart Feedback is another approach unique to Trend Micro, a company that has created one
    of the world's largest "neighborhood watch community" — integrated
    feedback loops that provide continuous communication between Trend Micro
    products as well as the company's 24/7 threat research centers and technologies
    in a two-way update stream. Each new threat identified via a single customer's
    routine reputation check, for example, automatically updates all of Trend
    Micro's threat databases around the world, blocking any subsequent customer
    encounters of a given threat. On average, the Smart Protection Network
    currently handles over 30 billion queries, and blocks nearly 4 billion threats
    a day.
  • Behavior Monitoring
    (Analysis)
    technology keeps an eye on applications to identify any
    abnormal activity that indicates malicious behavior. By correlating the
    different components of a threat and continuously updating its threat
    databases, Trend Micro has the distinct advantage of being able to respond in
    real time, providing immediate and automatic protection from email and Web
    threats.

About the Author: Kara Krautter