Test malware handling capabilities of network security devices

At RSA Conference 2013 in San Francisco, Spirent Communications announced the release of malware testing capabilities on Spirent Studio. With the addition of malware testing, Spirent offers its customers a comprehensive solution to test a range of security issues, including fuzzing, encryption, VPN, signature-based attacks and DDoS threats.

Combined with Spirent Avalanche, Studio delivers multi-10 Gbps capacity, security, and performance testing for network and web application infrastructure.

The growth in the BYOD trend changes the mix of traffic on the network and may significantly increase the chances of being attacked by malware, thereby impacting network security and performance. The BYOD trend may result in IT having to cope with users attaching devices with non-standard operating systems, out-of-date patches, missing or unsupported protocols and little or no security software. Notwithstanding all the challenges, IT must still ensure secure and properly functioning enterprise networks and services.

Spirent’s approach to testing malware includes replicating malware binaries being sent through firewalls and IPS/IDS devices as payload over HTTP and FTP transports. It also includes replicating the behavior of infected end devices. This latter step is essential to detecting and eliminating advanced persistent threats that may have embedded themselves inside a protected network.

“Spirent already offers the widest breadth of security testing capabilities based upon the most realistic events and threats, and this new addition means that our customers can easily include malware in their testing methodologies, giving them protection against the tide of new threats that appear every day,” said Ankur Chadda, Product Marketing Manager at Spirent. “There are tens of millions of pieces of malware out in the world, and smart companies are taking this threat seriously by adhering to best practices and utilizing the very latest in malware testing.”