EdgeGuard™ Solo

Stops What Today's AntiVirus Software Misses

EdgeGuard Solo is client security software that protects you from malware attacks that legacy, signature-based AntiVirus software misses. Today’s AntiVirus products stop as few as 34% of the attacks. You can no longer rely solely on AntiVirus software. You need EdgeGuard Solo for full protection.

Endpoint Protection Highlights

Blocks Zero-day Malware Attacks— Stops viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware executables, and rootkits that elude signature-based tools (i.e., legacy AntiVirus products).
Nullifies ActiveX Vulnerabilities—Allows ActiveX controls to run while preventing them from being used to compromise your security.
Protects Without Signatures— Unlike legacy AntiVirus and Anti-Spyware products, EdgeGuard Solo does not require signatures to stop malware attacks. You never have to worry about having ‘the latest signatures’.
Generates No False Positives—Blocks malware without using heuristics or behavioral analyses, which are error prone and require constant fine-tuning.
Ideal for Everyday Users—Protects users without asking them to make uninformed decisions about security settings. It simply stops malware attacks.

Runs Efficiently—While most anti-malware tools can be very resource intensive, EdgeGuard Solo requires few resources and is virtually invisible to the user.
Supplements Other Security Software—Signature-based anti-malware, personal firewall, disk encryption, and many other client security tools can continue to operate normally with EdgeGuard Solo.
Accommodates Client Software —Protection is non-intrusive. EdgeGuard Solo simply prevents applications from harming themselves, other applications, or critical operating system resources.
Deploys Easily—Users just install EdgeGuard Solo and then select the applications to be protected.

Legacy AntiVirus Products are Increasingly Ineffective

Malware makers systematically alter the signature of their malware to fool AntiVirus products. At DefCon16, a contest to re-craft old malware to elude these products, researchers competed not on whether they could, but on how fast they could create variants. A researcher at Black 2008 described a BotNet that systematically alters the malware it uses to attack computers every ten minutes. By 2009, all BotNets will have this capability. AntiVirus products that rely on signatures cannot keep up.

Heuristic and Behavioral Based Products are Failing

HIPS products typically employ heuristics, behavioral analysis, and/or extremely fine-grained configuration rules. They aim to protect everything at the endpoint by treating everything with equal risk, resulting in excessive complexity and ineffective protection. In contrast, the EdgeGuard Solo design philosophy prioritizes protection. It focuses on high risk vectors and high risk applications to provide practical, effective protection. It protects PCs without heuristics, behavioral analyses, or intrusive policy rules.

Heuristics and behavioral analysis mechanisms stop malware attacks by trying to distinguish between normal and abnormal behavior and then blocking or rolling-back the attack. By definition, heuristics are intended to gain computational performance or conceptual simplicity, potentially at the cost of accuracy or precision. Many characterize this as guessing. Ultimately, end-users must deal with numerous false positives. Rules-based HIPS intrusively and explicitly regulate what any particular application or operating system component may or may not do.

HIPS products require uncommon familiarity with the idiosyncrasies of each application and component. They ask end-users to deal with convoluted ‘would you like to allow this technical thing to happen’ questions. Security patches and upgrades to client software add even more complexity because they alter application behavior.

As HIPS vendors try to simplify the user experience with templates as well as low, medium, and high security level settings, they are also exposing users to greater risks. End-users tend to use the low or medium levels, which are far less disruptive and confusing but considerably less effective in detecting malware.

Usability was a primary design requirement for EdgeGuard Solo. Novice computer users are easily protected without having to make uninformed security decisions.

How EdgeGuard Solo Stops Zero-day Malware

After installation, computer users open the EdgeGuard Solo GUI. They then point and click on the applications that are to be guarded. One should select any user application that processes documents, media files, or enables communications with the rest of the world.

EdgeGuard Solo employs kernel and application level techniques to regulate file system and registry resource access. When malware attempts to exploit a programming mistake in a software application to infest a PC, the hijacked application is used to alter files, executables, and registry settings.