WEBROOT REAL-TIME ANTIPHISHING SERVICE
In a recent Webroot Survey1 of IT Directors conducted in the USA and the UK the number one Internet security breach reported by over 55% of respondents was a Phishing breach. Phishing and spearphishing have grown tremendously in popularity as an attack, as with a little online research cyber-criminals can easily find and use publicly available data to fool recipients into clicking on a link. By playing on user trust through using a little social engineering attackers can be sure to score an immediate compromise, or kick-off the process of hijacking their data or identity.
The new Webroot Real-Time Antiphishing Service uses new proprietary Webroot technology, based upon the massive analytical power of the Webroot Intelligence Network, to protect enterprises web users by ensuring that they are always, and only, connected to the website they intended to interact with.
Stopping Advanced Phishing Attacks
Using the world's most advanced combination of machine learning algorithms and human classification systems, in combination with the Webroot Intelligence Network, allows Webroot to continuously grow and maintain the world’s largest and most accurate Internet security intelligence network.
IN USE
- Powers a Partner’s secure web gateway to add filtering based on predictive scoring of the risk of visiting a website as well as the historical categorization of a website’s content.
- Powers a major anti-fraud service protecting >5,000 enterprises from phishing and other frauds and helps them keep up with the high volumes of phishing URLs
The Webroot Real-Time Antiphishing Service works by evaluating any URLs requested by users and scoring them ‘real-time’ for phishing risk using hundreds of the “features’ of the site. These include the content on the page, reputation information of the domain, plus numerous other factors. Machine learning determines which features are significant for each scanned URL and what weight to apply to each in the classification. It also is capable of feeding back human evaluation into the machine model to continually increase the accuracy of its determinations.
Phishing attacks reflect how easy it is to create a ‘clone’ of a legitimate website and for a user to be totally unaware they are being spoofed. All these attacks work by obfuscating URLs and directing traffic to counterfeit websites that attempt to trick users into divulging sensitive information. Bad news if the user is conducting on-line banking, connecting to a sensitive system, or carrying out any other type of sensitive interaction. But, with the ease of fooling users, it’s easy to see why the number of unique phishing sites has now reached an all-time high and Phishing is the preferred way for attackers to compromise users.
The Webroot Real-Time Antiphishing Service now provides a proactive answer to this very real and significant threat that is trended to grow significantly in the year ahead.
1 Webroot Web Security Survey December 2012
