Trend Micro Custom Defense Extends Email Protection to Shield Customers Against Acute, High Impact Spear Phishing Attacks

A new breed of phishing attacks is evolving to be more deliberate, highly extortionist, and harder to detect, calling for Trend Micro to step up its email security solutions.

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Trend Micro Incorporated

Oct 08, 2012, 02:15 ET

CUPERTINO, Calif., Oct. 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of its recent unveiling of a new Custom Defense solution to help customers combat APTs and targeted attacks (read the announcement here), Trend Micro is also elevating its email security products for better threat detection capability and superior "custom" defenses to detect zero-day attacks that aggressively pursue and compromise specific targets.

Many targeted attacks, having grown in volume, velocity, and variety, begin at a seemingly benign point of contact: A simple email message disguised to be a spear phishing message designed to give the attacker a nearly permanent inside track to covertly siphon and bankrupt the victim's information database. Relatively unknown a few years ago, targeted attacks against government, corporate, educational, and civil society networks are regularly tracked today by Trend Micro threat researchers who are analyzing cybercriminal activities across the globe, 24 hours a day.

Building upon its threat intelligence and reconnaissance – unparalleled within the industry – Trend Micro looks in more places for threat data, using big data analytics to deliver actionable intelligence across mobile, physical, and cloud environments. All of this provides the foundation for how the company is aligning its email security solutions to better address the cyber-espionage that's asserting the threat landscape. By integrating the new Trend Micro™ Deep Discovery Advisor, a hardware appliance that delivers threat detection and sandboxing, network-wide log collection, and deep threat analysis into a single platform, Trend Micro enables its email security solutions to not only stop traditional threats, but also identify these highly targeted email attacks that have come into play. Unlike specialized defense layers and standard email security solutions, Trend Micro provides leading capabilities in both traditional and advanced areas in a single email security layer with largely existing infrastructure and administration personnel.

New features for targeted attack protection include:

Spear phishing protection, which scans incoming email for APTs and other targeted attacks; determines the scope of a potential compromise when a targeted attack message is first detected, detects advanced malware that may use unknown exploits, and issues adaptive security updates to other security layers. No organization is immune to spear phishing attacks. Even just last week, the White House confirmed an attempted hack on one of its networks – among the most secure in the world-- through a spear phishing attempt.
New document exploit detection engine, which uses static and heuristic logic to examine PDF, MS Office, and other documents for abnormalities in addition to known and zero-day exploits. It is included with all three products at no additional charge and can be used with or without automatic sandbox analysis. The two Trend Micro™ ScanMail products can also use this engine to scan the mail store for targeted attacks which may have occurred before protection was available.
Optional integration with Deep Discovery Advisor to detect advanced malware. This newly created product provides automatic execution analysis of suspicious email attachments in customer defined sandbox environments. When threats are detected it integrates logs and Trend Micro threat intelligence to provide in-depth threat insights on who is attacking, with what, and how. Finally, it issues adaptive security updates to Trend Micro and 3^rd party products to remediate and protect against further attacks.
Enhanced web reputation powered by the Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™ cloud computing security infrastructure to block malicious URLs. The recently expanded Smart Protection Network is a global threat intelligence that rapidly and accurately collects and identifies new threats, delivering instant protection for data wherever it resides.

Supporting quotes

Ed Brill, director, social business and collaboration solutions, IBM Corp.
"Trend Micro has an unwavering commitment to securing the Domino platform. In the many years we've worked together, Trend Micro has consistently delivered on its promise of creating the best email security solutions that are always relevant to the most current threats. The latest advanced malware detection capabilities integrated into ScanMail for Lotus Domino is an important step in protecting our customers against today's most persistent threats."

Steve Quane, CPO, Trend Micro
"We're seeing more and more targeted attacks come through via email. The impact of these attacks can be severe and any data obtained by the attackers can be used in future, more precise attacks. Trend Micro's email security solutions, now integrated with Deep Discovery Advisor, are the only offerings we've found available today that include advanced threat detection capability for superior APT defense."

Trend Micro is also introducing new versions of its email security products, which will be available later this year. In addition to the new targeted attack protections and integration with Deep Discovery Advisor these products also include:

Trend Micro™ InterScan Messaging™ Security 8.2 SP2

NEW - Marketing Messaging Scanning, which identifies bulk marketing messages to allow customers to have separate dispositions for these emails.

Trend Micro™ ScanMail™ for IBM Lotus Domino 5.5

Through this major new release, Trend Micro, which supports the largest customers in the world running Lotus Domino, reaffirms its commitment to protecting this user base.
NEW – Data Loss Prevention, designed to block emails containing compliance data in real-time; searches mail store to discover non-compliance items; and integrates with Trend Micro Control Manager for central management.
NEW - Web Threat Protection with local Smart Protection Server, for added protection against spear phishing.

Trend Micro™ ScanMail™ for Microsoft Exchange 10.2 SP2

NEW – Search and Destroy, an innovative feature which performs targeted searches through the Exchange mail store to enable administrators to quickly respond to requests from legal, human resources, or security departments to find, trace, and destroy specific sensitive messages.

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Availability

Trend Micro's email security portfolio includes: Trend Micro InterScan Messaging Security, Trend Micro ScanMail for IBM Lotus Domino, and Trend Micro ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange. The latest version of ScanMail for Lotus Domino will be available in early November 2012. The latest versions of ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange and InterScan Messaging Security will be available in December 2012.

About Trend Micro
Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704;TSE: 4704), a global cloud security leader, creates a world safe for exchanging digital information with its Internet content security and threat management solutions for businesses and consumers. A pioneer in server security with over 20 years' experience, we deliver top-ranked client, server and cloud-based security that fits our customers' and partners' needs, stops new threats faster, and protects data in physical, virtualized and cloud environments. Powered by the industry-leading Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™ cloud computing security infrastructure, our products and services stop threats where they emerge – from the Internet. They are supported by 1,000+ threat intelligence experts around the globe.

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SOURCE Trend Micro Incorporated