Virus Protection: Computer Associates Adds Industry-Leading Virus Protection Solution To Enterprise and Workgroup Edition Product Lines - Product Information

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Oct 12, 1998

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) Tuesday announced InoculateIT, the industry's most comprehensive and effective antivirus solution. Available in Enterprise and Workgroup editions, this next generation of CA's award winning Inoculan provides real-time virus protection for the entire enterprise - including all servers and clients - by continuously detecting and curing potentially damaging viruses.

At the heart of InoculateIT is a sophisticated, proven virus-scanning engine that has consistently out-performed competitive products in comparative testing. InoculateIT includes a new heuristic engine with the unique ability to detect and cure 32 bit polymorphic viruses. InoculateIT detects 100 percent of viruses in the wild and the increasingly prevalent and damaging macro, stealth, and polymorphic varieties. Advanced, heuristic rules-based detection technology detection engine enables InoculateIT to even detect unknown viruses before they can do damage to the network.

A special Internet Protection option provides additional Internet gateway protection to prevent viruses and malicious Java and ActiveX applets from entering customer networks via HTTP, SMTP, FTP and other popular protocols.

"In today's world of pervasive connectivity, local detection is insufficient," said Yogesh Gupta, CA senior vice president of product strategy. "Mechanisms are required to ensure persistent detection and correction on both the client and server. Management and intervention before damage occurs is also critical. InoculateIT enables IT departments to minimize risk as their computing environments become larger and increasingly open to the outside world."

InoculateIT protects today's diverse, open computing environments from malicious code intrusions at all possible points of entry. This protection includes several compressed file formats. InoculateIT's messaging system agents detect and cure viruses in e-mail and file attachments in real time. Moreover, InoculateIT provides out-of-the-box, integrated management, administration and distribution of virus signatures for comprehensive cross enterprise protection.

In addition to detecting these viruses, InoculateIT performs remedial actions automatically. These actions include virus cures, isolation of virus sources, and the quarantine, deletion and/or temporary transfer of infected files.

"Virus protection isn't an island of management responsibility. It's really an integral aspect of our overall approach to the security and well-being of our network and systems environment," said Dwayne Stafford, senior network engineer, Merced County Office of Education in Merced, Calif. "With CA's InoculateIT, we've gained best-in-class virus protection in a package that enables us to incorporate that protection into our broader strategy for maximizing availability while minimizing ongoing operational costs."

To continually protect against the onslaught of new viruses, InoculateIT automatically downloads free monthly virus signature updates from the Internet and distributes these files to InoculateIT servers and clients to provide up-to-date protection.

"Web-centric computing demands comprehensive protection against the omnipresent virus threat, regardless of the point of attack used to infect an organization," said Steve Foote, senior vice president, Hurwitz Group. "CA's InoculateIT solutions have the technological acumen and systems management pedigree to stay one step ahead of the virus designers in the continued struggle to keep clients and servers safe for conducting business."

To ensure that customers gain the full protection of these powerful detection and remediation functions, InoculateIT meets IT staffs' needs for ease of deployment and administration. These essential management features include automated installation and hands-free updating of servers and networked clients. All systems in the enterprise or workgroup that are protected by InoculateIT can be easily grouped and managed from one central console. Unique domain management features greatly simplify remote viewing, configuring, and scanning of InoculateIT servers and clients.

InoculateIT's reporting tools also make it easy for network and system administrators to identify and evaluate all virus events, including files checked, viruses found, responses taken and sources/users associated with each event.

Like all of CA's Enterprise and Workgroup Edition products, InoculateIT is built on CA's Unicenter TNG Framework. InoculateIT leverages the Framework's sophisticated management services - including auto discovery, centralized alert handling, consolidated reporting and common object repository - to deliver unparalleled scalability and full inter-application integration. Enterprise and Workgroup Edition customers also reap the benefits of the Unicenter's Real World Interface (2D, 3D, Windows and Web-based) and Business Process Views.

InoculateIT protects Windows NT servers, and Windows NT, Windows 3.x, Windows 95/98, DOS and Macintosh clients.