McAfee has unveiled an update to Labs that it claims advances the threat detection and protection by harnessing the power of the cloud and its security software installed on users PCs.
The newly invented technology is part of McAfee Global Threat Intelligence and provides two ways to fight against the continuing onslaught of malicious software, or malware.
McAfee Labs researchers can now search for new cyberthreats by using the millions of computers running its software as discovery beacons, and use these beacons to look for suspicious activity without impacting system performance and report back through the cloud where the intelligence is used in aggregate.
Once suspicious activity is identified, researchers isolate, investigate and develop and deploy countermeasures if appropriate.
In second method McAfee Labs researchers can now create more advanced countermeasures that go beyond the traditional malware fingerprints, raising the bar on cybercriminals who continuously seek to circumvent security software.
The new technology allows McAfee Labs to test the effectiveness of advanced countermeasures, maximising effectiveness and also minimising the chance of erroneous detections.
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The company said that the new technology enables them to take advantage of their global presence and millions of PCs running McAfee to spot threats that other security providers may not see.
McAfee Labs chief technology officer Mike Gallagher said that the new approach by McAfee Labs changes the way they identify and create protection against new malicious software threats such as viruses, worms and Trojan horses.
"It is time to move beyond providing protection based on the conveyor belt of malicious software samples shared among cybersecurity companies," added Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Labs. "While samples are still important, the industry has been too focused on samples and creating signatures for the growing number of samples. It simply doesn’t scale, the bad guys have won that battle."
