White Paper Library

Understanding and Blocking the New Botnets

Botnets are widely regarded as the top threat to network security. This paper explains how botnets have traditionally worked, then contrasts the established model with startling botnet innovations that emerged in 2007 and are continuing to evolve. Examples describe botnets known as Zunker, Gozi, Storm, MayDay, and a kit known as Mpack that helps botmasters easily create malicious web sites. After explaining why the latest innovations make bots a more serious threat than ever, the paper concludes by suggesting defensive countermeasures.

In a Hurry?

Download the two page summary of best practices for keeping botnets out of your network. When you have more time, come back for the full white paper. It's an excellent resource for anyone who wants to understand how botnets work and what makes your network vulnerable.

True Zero Day Protection: The Only Defense Against Evolving Security Threats

Zero day attacks can pass undetected through conventional signature-based network defenses. The actual number of infections is staggering, and dealing with them burdens IT departments and impacts corporate bottom lines. This white paper explains the mechanisms behind zero day threats and shows how the WatchGuard approach of combining application proxy firewall and intelligent layered security offers protection from zero day attacks, providing strong protection for critical business networks.

Meeting PCI DSS Merchant Requirements with a WatchGuard® Firebox®

In seeking PCI DSS compliance, it is critical to design a network with appropriate physical and logical boundaries to segregate the PCI-compliant operating environment. The PCI DSS monitoring scope must also be made manageable. Download this white paper to find out how the strong segregation capability available with the application proxy technology of the WatchGuard® Firebox® X family of UTM appliances is ideally suited to meeting these standards. Use the handy tables included at the end of the white paper to track the specific PCI DSS requirements met with a Firebox X deployment.

In a Hurry?

Download the two page summary of our PCI compliance white paper. You’ll have a handy checklist of PCI requirements, each mapping to the specific Firebox capabilities that ensure your network meets the standards. For more detailed analysis of PCI compliance, download the full white paper.

Producing Your Network Security Policy

This paper lays out a common-sense approach to writing corporate security policies that makes them easier to draft, maintain, and enforce. Our "question and answer" approach requires no outside consultants. Instead, you can use your in-house knowledge and resources to yield a brief, usable, and — most importantly — understandable policy document, in a reasonable amount of time.

Security for the Wireless Network

From businesses and homes to public spaces, it's easier than ever to work using Wi-Fi connections. Wi-Fi is convenient and cost-effective, but wireless networks' security implications can quickly nullify any benefits that they may offer: a business working with sensitive or private information and operating on an insecure network can open itself up to serious litigation in the event of a security breach. This white paper examines common wireless security controls, current hacker tricks, and recent legislative responses to Internet crime. And so you're not left up the wireless security creek, we give you specific steps you can take to avoid the risks.

Unified Threat Management: How to Stop Spyware, Spam, Viruses, and Other Malicious Attacks

Keeping corporate networks safe is more challenging every year, and network security has become one of the most critical issues facing businesses today. New and ever-changing threats appear with alarming regularity, and no organization is immune from risk. So what's a network to do? The answer lies in Unified Threat Management (UTM), in which multi-layered security works in conjunction with signature-based solutions and other capabilities to provide solid, comprehensive protection against complex threats.

WatchGuard and Unified Threat Management: A Technical Perspective

Unified Threat Management is the name for an emerging trend in the appliance security market. Unified Threat Management appliances have evolved traditional firewall and VPN appliances into a solution that has many additional capabilities, such as URL filtering, spam blocking, spyware protection, intrusion prevention, and gateway antivirus, as well as centralized management, monitoring, and logging capabilities — all functions previously handled by multiple systems.

Intelligent Layered Security: True Zero Day Protection from Known and Unknown Threats

Security threats have increased in sophistication, frequency, and complexity as we have seen hacking become increasingly driven by fraud and organized crime. Today, the traditional stateful packet inspecting firewall is insufficient network protection when working alone. Businesses need an integrated security solution that by design protects against today's threats while remaining flexible enough to defend against the threats of tomorrow. Addressing this need, WatchGuard® created the Intelligent Layered Security (ILS) architecture to provide the best defense possible against today's complex and rapidly changing threat environment.

Network Security 101: The Value of a Protected Network

Knowing the actual business value of your IT infrastructure as it relates to your business operations and company mission is crucial to understanding the financial consequences of any network security breach. This knowledge is important information to have, and should be top of mind, when developing an effective security plan and a realistic security budget.

Blocking Malware and Spyware Without Signatures

Contending with malware and spyware is the most taxing burden on IT staff today. A serious problem over the past five years, malicious code attacks have escalated in unprecedented numbers in the past twelve months. Find out how to combat these menaces without relying on signature files alone.

A Practical Guide for Better Security

Network security is as much about business advantage as it is about deterring threats. This guide contains an outline for a security plan that addresses your critical business concerns — customer confidence, data integrity, increased productivity and cost savings — and tells you how to start making security a business advantage by thoroughly targeting security vulnerabilities at their source: the people and their processes.