Village Gamer

Indusface, a multi-national website security company with offices in Ottawa, has released a powerful anti malvertising feature in the latest version of its flagship product IndusGuard. This new feature aims to combat the threat that businesses and publishing networks face due to increased spread of malware using online advertising, a lucrative setting for miscreants to attack websites through malvertising.

IndusGuard addresses this whilst providing continuous, automated and comprehensive security testing for vulnerability assessment, application audit, malware monitoring, blacklisting and defacement detection. This complemented with expert revalidation, business logic and zero false positives checks enable Indusface to provide total website security for businesses globally.

More than 10 million users were exposed to drive-by exploits in February 2012. The malware attacks have doubled since last year, and there is a 95% probability that an internet user will hit an infected page within three months of web browsing. Nearly 10 billion ad impressions were compromised by malvertising in 2010 alone which makes malvertising amongst the fastest growing security threats online, as any website with advertising is a target.

Internet ad spend is expected to reach $94.97 billion in 2013.The lure for fraction of profits from this pie has malvertisers using advertisements to serve up links to harmful sites on legitimate websites. In order to compromise a website, embedding a malicious code is not a necessity. In some cases, users do not even have to click ads to trigger malware; hidden iframes can be called using JavaScripts which load files containing malicious code to exploit various vulnerabilities. Users are more likely to click on the ad because it is present on a site which they trust.

Trusted brands like Facebook, Spotify and Twitter whose services are mostly free, have to derive their revenue from advertisers. Ad sponsored services are necessary to help businesses generate revenue, but are extremely prone to malvertisers on the prowl as it’s tough to control the content provided by these ads. Various organizations have been exploited time and again, despite stringent online security measures, thus making it imperative to maintain constant vigilance and use anti malvertising technology to counter these attacks.

It is because of the presence of such a hostile threat landscape that Indusface has enhanced its flagship product IndusGuard to help prevent malvertising attacks through all types of ad networks. IndusGuard is a zero touch, non- intrusive, cloud based solution which safeguards websites by daily, automatic and comprehensive scanning for systems and application vulnerabilities, and malware. It provides a broad coverage of security issues, which includes finding known and unknown malware. Indusface’s next generation automated web scanning platform delivers IndusGuard Basic, IndusGuard Advanced and IndusGuard Premium solutions to customers worldwide, whilst addressing the needs of the most basic to large mission critical websites. With IndusGuard, websites can now safely display third party ads without having to worry about whether anti-malvertising controls have been implemented or not.

The new anti malvertising feature will help scan and detect malicious ads, trace their source, provide immediate alerts, and identify zero day malvertising through the wide ranging security intelligence of IndusGuard’s powerful web scanning technology on a daily basis. Ads will get scanned with a high level of automation which will deep dive into the main and sub ad networks. Protecting users from potential malware attacks is important for the company’s image and reputation. Sites overrun with malware get blacklisted by search engines. With websites being connected to many third party networks for ads, link building etc, it is imperative to get the content from them scanned before being placed on the main website. This will go a long way in protecting brand reputation, reduce technical and liability costs which end up affecting businesses and protect users from malvertising attacks.

“Extensive research has shown that malvertising continues to be amongst the top 3 threats online. Organizations need to adopt stringent measures to proactively secure their websites and protect users from malicious ads. IndusGuard’s ground breaking technology and deep understanding of security needs will help secure online advertising and protect websites from third party malware, enabling businesses to manage and mitigate such risky exposures on a daily basis”, Claude Essomba, President & Founder of GetSec Sarl.”

“The incidents of malvertising are on an alarming rise with millions of users being affected and most of them not knowing it till it’s too late. Unsecured third party content can very easily damage brand image and blacklist websites from prominent search engines, leading to huge accountable and non-accountable losses running into billions of dollars. Therefore, tackling malware and malvertising from an early stage is absolutely mandatory. The growing need to fight this has been identified amongst our clients, which is why we have expanded IndusGuard to include the new anti malvertising feature. With this expansion, we have significantly strengthened our vision of ensuring that our product offering covers all aspects of security, giving our customers unique continuous total website security coverage” said Dhanya Thakkar, President, Indusface.