Cyberoam’s ‘Accelerator Series’ Offer Breakthrough Performance

Speed is what every organization is after – speed that doesn’t come at a cost. Cyberoam has recently launched ‘Accelerator Series’ UTM appliances, CR50ia and CR100ia, that combine breakthrough network performance with comprehensive network security for SMEs. With gigabit throughput, the appliances offer almost five times higher firewall throughput and twice the IPS throughput in comparison to the existing models, delivering high security and value for money to SMEs.

The new and sophisticated web applications like Web 2.0, social networking sites and SaaS, have made organizations soft targets of network security threats. CR50ia and CR100ia revolutionize network efficiency and provide accelerated security with throughputs that are far superior to competitors.

With the rise in insider threats, control over the user and visibility into user activity has become critical to ensuring network security in SMEs. Cyberoam’s ‘Accelerator Series’ enables them to protect their networks against new and blended attacks by giving complete user visibility and unprecedented degree of user controls that lead to high flexibility and ease of management. Given the high throughputs in ‘Accelerator Series’ appliances, administrators can ensure high security while maintaining high performance in SMEs.

The Conficker pandemic continues to hurt Internet users!

- A quick update on cyber attacks hitting the news in Q1, 2009

The Conficker worm and its variants A, B and C can give any marketer a run for his money when it comes to reaching maximum people in minimum time. Conficker today affects 15 million users worldwide! Here’s a quick look at the modus operandi of each one of these. The Conficker A worm exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, gets into the system and generates a list of 250 random domains. The infected system then communicates with the domains until it finds the one that has been set up with a payload with further instructions. Conficker B passes from one computer to another through network shares and USB devices. The deadliest of the lot, Conficker C invalidates the security solution within the system and blocks security update websites, making it difficult to fight back against it. Adding teeth to its menace is the fact that it generates 50,000 domains every day!

Other growing trends in the Internet threat scenario in Q1 2009 were phishing attacks using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Phishers exploited communities of friends and their sentiments through direct messages that asked for money or personal and financial information. The popular tech site, ZDNet, was exploited in the last quarter by emails that recommended a technology article as a Google doc by ZDNet’s Tech Update service. The hyperlink in the email led to an advertisement for International Rx.

ISPs continued to suffer the brunt of cyber miscreants, who modified their tactics by targeting one ISP at a time rather than sending large numbers of emails to many ISPs, to avoid detection and blacklisting.

Spammers continued to borrow legitimacy of popular websites by stealing images from genuine websites to avoid detection by traditional image spam filters. They created fake landing pages to extract personal information.

Spam levels averaged 72% of all email traffic throughout the quarter with loan spam topping the list of spam topics. An average of 302, 000 zombies were activated each day during this quarter with Brazil reported as the biggest hub of zombies.

Check the detailed report on Internet Threat Trends in Q1 2009.

V-Day Spam Recipients help perpetuate the Spam – Survey Results

A recent survey by Cyberoam on Valentine’s Day Spam has brought out some interesting insights.

While 56% of the respondents confirmed that they received V-day Spam mails on their personal addresses, an equally high 46% confirmed receiving spam mails on their corporate mail addresses. A huge number of respondents admitted to opening the spam despite knowing that it was from unknown sources and was potentially dangerous.

At 37 %, a significant number confirmed that they would forward the spam from unknown sources, raising the overall security risk to users and organizations alike.



Dating mails are the biggest spam threat at 60%, way ahead of health and medication.



It turns out that spammers are cashing in on user preference for online purchase of flowers, chocolates and other gifts.



A whopping 62% of the respondents confirmed clicking on spam that promised “free” gifts. Similar patterns emerged for V-day pictures and videos.

In conclusion, we advise mail recipients and website visitors alike to be extremely cautious during periods such as V-day when spam creates havoc. The fact that a mail is from a known person does not make it a good mail – the original message could have been part of spam that is being forwarded.

Download the report as a PDF

Cyberoam UTM introduces on-appliance SSL VPN

I am pleased to announce that Cyberoam now offers SSL VPN to customers on its patent-pending UTM appliances.

Given the widespread mobility among employees and corporate networks opening up to partners and customers, SSL VPN I’d say is a must for any organization that wants to deliver Anywhere – Any Device secure remote access. Looking at the fact that road warriors and telecommuters are accessing corporate networks from multiple locations – homes, airports, client networks, public kiosks and that they are not limiting themselves to a single client-installed device – accessing the corporate network over not just laptops, but home computers, PDAs and cell phones, the need for easy web-based, client-less SSL VPN speaks for itself. And then, there’s the matter of partners and customers who require access to the corporate extranet, sometimes more.

It’s a matter of pride that we have launched the SSL VPN along with the VPNC certification – a confirmation that the Cyberoam SSL VPN works with a wide variety of web portals, browsers and dynamic websites and the SSL client provides a true network extension experience.

No cumbersome client installations that aren’t just expensive, but time-consuming. And well nigh impossible when you think of partner and customer access.

With its web-based and client-based access, the Cyberoam SSL VPN allows secure access to internal applications through any endpoint device from any location, by any authorized person. It achieves this by focusing on the ‘user’ and not the ‘device’ for authentication. The real benefit from Cyberoam SSL VPN is that it is platform, device and location-independent. Further, it ensures that corporate firewalls do not block remote access, ensuring business continuity.

At the same time, Cyberoam’s identity-based access policies allow administrators to limit access to certain applications or offer full access based on the user identity and work profile.

There’s also the option of full and split tunneling. While split tunneling ensures tunneling and encryption of traffic to the corporate network, full tunneling secures normal Internet traffic too, routing the remote user’s Internet traffic through the SSL VPN tunnel. Sensitive corporate emails can be sent from airport kiosks, hotspots and other public locations without fear of network sniffers accessing the sensitive information.

But, when it comes down to the basics for UTM customers, it’s a matter of choice. Organizations that invest in UTM appliances do so for their high efficiency, effective security and ease of management. But with most UTM appliances providing only IPSec VPNs, organizations are forced to function within this limitation or look for dedicated SSL VPN appliances defeating the purpose of a UTM.

The basic premise on which UTMs are deployed is one of comprehensive security in a single appliance. When we provided SSL VPN on the Cyberoam UTM, it was to meet the secure remote connectivity requirements of SMEs and enterprises over the UTM platform – delivering what is expected of a UTM.

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