SmoothWall in response to Webroot spyware research
Friday, 21 October 2005 14:55 EST



21 October, 2005 - “At SmoothWall we often talk to people with spyware problems and it is a common lament that they didn't go on any "dodgy" sites - and in many cases, this is true. Spyware lurks in the strangest of places and the definitions of "dodgy" blur with the person you're talking to,” Tom Newton, Product Manager for SmoothWall.

“Worse still, in a shared environment such as an office, spyware can infect a user's PC via a colleague's – many malicious programs have multiple attack vectors, for example spyware downloaded innocently from the Web as a Trojan piggybacking on some friendly looking software may replicate further through shared drives within an office.

“Educating users is only a small part of the solution. Some users don't wish to be educated, and most feel they are doing no wrong. Client-side Anti-virus and spyware defence is great, but analogous to shutting the stable door as the horse is leaving! Border controls are an important addition to the network administrator's arsenal, and we would suggest implementation of web content filtering, with suitable content-security, and file-type blocking coupled with egress filtering to prevent peer-to-peer file sharing. This is a strategy that has been seen to work in reducing infections in many businesses, and it should be remembered that the less infections that exist for a particular piece of spyware, the less motivation there is to write the next one.”

About SmoothWall Limited
Formed in 2000, SmoothWall is the leading Internet security provider now protecting over half a million networks worldwide. With its specialist development team, SmoothWall has harnessed years of technical expertise to develop a suite of firewall, virtual private network (VPN), content filtering and bandwidth solutions used by SMEs, large corporate organisations and educational institutions.