Security of Your File-Sharing Apps...

Security specialists have always claimed that file-sharing clients, video applications and social networking were all taking the best of your bandwidth, let alone the fact that they created a serious hole through which viruses and malware could get into your PC. Today this theory is tested by a network security company Palo Alto. Between May and December 2012, the security company has investigated the firewall logs of over 3.000 of its clients. According to the logs, the average network had contained 30 video apps, 19 file-sharing apps, and 17 social networking apps (like well-known Facebook and YouTube).

These applications proved to consume only 20% of the available bandwidth. In addition, only 0.4% of the logs which contained threat warnings were discovered. Nevertheless, video applications proved to be consuming most of bandwidth (about 13% of the available bandwidth).

This means that ISPs which choose to block such apps in order to increase security and bandwidth are recommended to reconsider their strategy. According to Palo Alto, a real security threat can be found within other popular apps, which account for 97% of all software exploits – Internet browsing, Microsoft SQL, MS SQL Monitor, MS Remote Procedure Call, SIP (VoIP), MS Office Communicator, Server Message Block, Active Directory, and DNS.

The security company agrees that by using the abovementioned apps you can exploit a system without ever crossing a perimeter IPS, underscoring the importance of outfits that bring IPS and threat prevention measures deeper into the network and not exclusively monitoring at the perimeter. The author of the report, company’s senior research analyst Matt Keil, explained that the volume of exploits targeting business critical apps had been stunning and served as a data center security wake-up call.

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