The Problem with Traditional Technologies

For years, anti-virus solutions have focused on identifying malware byusing signatures as a tag to mark and quarantine known threats. However,these solutions have been found by leading security academics andresearchers to be ineffective when faced with new emerging threats. Manythreats have not yet entered signature databases while others can mutate toavoid signature matching.

A new breed of "behavior-based" anti-malware approaches have launched overthe past few years. These solutions focus on identifying malware behaviors,as opposed to their signatures. But this first generation of behavior-basedsolutions were marked by higher than average false positive rates, whichmeant they identified harmless software as being malware.

"Today's hackers are targeting unsuspecting PC users by silently infectingcomputers to send spam, perform web attacks and carry out other crimes,"said John Mitchell, professor of computer science at Stanford University."Infected computers often show no symptoms of infection, making itdifficult to know you've got a problem. Anti-malware solutions need to beinnovative and need to be catching new threats."

Introducing a New Behavior-based Approach - Specification-based Protection

Based on breakthrough research at the University of Wisconsin's leadingcomputer science and security lab and with backing from the NationalScience Foundation, NovaShield Anti-Malware approaches malware detectionthrough a break-through form of behavior-based threat detection calledspecification-based monitoring.

Whereas traditional signature-based anti-virus solutions rely on hundredsof thousands of policies to detect potential threats and require an average19-day window of exposure before a new infection can be detected, removedand blocked, NovaShield Anti-Malware's underlying specification-basedtechnology employs fewer than a dozen generalized policies that identifymalicious activities in real-time.

"Our approach is well designed to supplement the protection afforded bycurrent signature-scanning anti-virus programs by taking on whattraditional technologies cannot," said Dr. Somesh Jha, co-founder and chiefscientist at NovaShield. "This software is optimized to detect emergingthreats, stop rapidly-morphing malware that circumvents signatures andfirewalls, and effectively and thoroughly remove these threats."

"I have been very impressed by NovaShield 2.5 beta," said Paul Tatarsky, aconsultant in computer security and intrusion detection. "Signature-basedanti-malware products are increasingly coming up empty when dealing withcutting edge malware -- NovaShield actually detects the system levelactivities of the most malicious malware. In addition to providing a newlevel of protection, NovaShield is the first behavior-based anti-malwaresoftware to drastically reduce the number of false positives and it won'tdrag down the performance of the computer it is protecting."

Pricing and Availability

Starting today, NovaShield Anti-Malware 2.5 is available for a free 15-daytrial and with a 1 or 2 year subscription. Introductory pricing for 1-yearsingle-user license is $19.95. Introductory subscription price for 2-yearsingle user license is $34.95. Family packs and 10-user small businesspacks will also be available. The product is available for download fromwww.novashield.com.

About NovaShield

NovaShield Inc. (www.NovaShield.com), founded by leading scientists at theUniversity of Wisconsin, develops technology to detect and eliminate thenext generation of malware threats on personal computers. Theirbreakthrough approach rapidly identifies previously unseen malware by usingspecification-based monitoring, a unique real-time approach for effectivelydetecting looming threats. The NovaShield team has developed the mostadvanced and accurate anti-malware product available to consumers andbusinesses with the best-in-class ability to find new threats such asdrive-by-downloads, Trojans, botnets, keyloggers, and rootkits. Funded bytwo competitive grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) andprivate investors, NovaShield is based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Media Contact:Bret ClementPage One PR (for NovaShield)303-462-3057Email Contact