Wick Hill gets blocking APTs

Wick Hill has extended its security aggregation services capability by adding WatchGuard’s new Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) solution, WatchGuard APT Blocker, to its roster of available security applications and services.

This delivers real-time threat visibility and protection in minutes, not hours, by identifying suspicious files and submitting them to a cloud-based, next-generation sandbox. This uses what WatchGuard claims is the industry's most sophisticated full-system-emulation environment for detecting APTs and zero day malware.

The WatchGuard solution integrates with the company's visibility tool, WatchGuard Dimension, to provide an instant, single view of advanced threats, along with other top trends, applications and threats covered by WatchGuard's security technologies.

APT Blocker comes pre-installed on all WatchGuard Unified Threat Management (UTM) and Next-Gen Firewall (NGFW) appliances with a free 30-day trial. The company has extended its proprietary proxy-based architecture to detect suspicious files and send them for full-system emulation and analysis in the cloud.

By adding an additional layer to the deep-packet-inspection engine, these detection capabilities now extend from the universe of known threats (malware for which there is a known pattern) into the unknown.

“APTs represent a major challenge to any organisation’s existing security environment, and because of their effectiveness, they are propagating at an increasing rate,” said James Kirpichnikov, WatchGuard product manager at Wick Hill. “The addition of an APT option to WatchGuard’s security solutions means that both new and existing SME and enterprise customers can easily and inexpensively protect against this growing threat.”

WatchGuard's UTM and NGFW security platforms were purpose-built to simplify the process of adding newly-emerging technologies such as APT management, meaning customers can deploy this sophisticated technology in a couple of clicks.

Historically, APT targets were exclusively governments and large enterprises whose critical infrastructures were stymied by the likes of Stuxnet and Duqu. But today, advanced threats have evolved to target much smaller organisations and corporations to similarly devastating effect. Such attacks have penetrated the defences of many organisations and can remain both active and undetected. The availability of such a service to the SMB community is, therefore, becoming far more significant.  

APT Blocker is now available and comes pre-installed with a free 30-day trial with the launch of version 11.9 of WatchGuard's Fireware security platform, which includes other best-of-breed services such as: AntiVirus, AntiSpam, Application Control and DLP. Fireware also comes standard with WatchGuard Dimension, the company's award-winning, real-time visibility solution.

This offers improved application-traffic management, allowing users to control and limit application bandwidth, preserving it for business-critical applications, expanded administrator-audit and change-tracking visibility for improved HIPAA and PCI compliance, including tying firewall rule changes to individuals, and customizable DLP signatures that allow companies to build on the extensive pre-defined rule sets of WatchGuard's DLP solution.

It also features enhanced IPv6 support including link aggregation, VLANS and dynamic routing, and a new custom network zone that allows administrators to quickly segregate wireless guest networks and meet PCI-standard requirements for appliances with integrated wireless.