About Gateway Antivirus And Intrusion Prevention - Watchguard Firebox X15 User Manual

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Gateway AntiVirus and
Intrusion Prevention Service

About Gateway AntiVirus and Intrusion Prevention

Hackers use many methods to attack computers on the Internet. The two primary categories of attack are
viruses and intrusions.
Viruses, including worms and Trojans, are malicious computer programs that self-replicate and put copies of
themselves into other executable code or documents on your computer. When a computer is infected, the
virus can destroy files or record key strokes.
Intrusions are direct attacks on your computer. Usually the attack exploits a vulnerability in an application.
These attacks are created to cause damage to your network, get sensitive information, or use your computers
to attack other networks.
To help protect your network from viruses and intrusions, you can purchase the optional Gateway AntiVirus/
Intrusion Prevention Service (Gateway AV/IPS) for the Firebox to identify and prevent attacks. Intrusion
Prevention Service and Gateway AntiVirus operate with the SMTP, POP3, HTTP, FTP, and TCP-UDP proxies.
When a new attack is identified, the features that make the virus or intrusion attack unique are recorded. These
recorded features are known as the signature. Gateway AV/IPS uses these signatures to find viruses and
intrusion attacks when they are scanned by the proxy.
WatchGuard cannot guarantee that Gateway AV/IPS can stop all viruses or intrusions, or prevent
damage to your systems or networks from a virus or intrusion attack.
You must purchase the Gateway AV/IPS upgrade to use these services. For more information, visit the
WatchGuard LiveSecurity web site at
You can see statistics on current Gateway AntiVirus and Intrusion Prevention Service activity on the Gateway
AV/IPS page, and trend reporting for Gateway AV/IPS on the System Status > Security Services page.
New viruses and intrusion methods appear on the Internet frequently. To make sure that Gateway AV/IPS
gives you the best protection, you must update the signatures frequently. You can configure the Firebox to
update the signatures automatically from WatchGuard, as described in
User Guide
http://www.watchguard.com/store or contact your WatchGuard reseller.
Update Gateway AV/IPS.
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