The year 2000 is not just about date based computer glitches; it may also be about viruses specially designed to take advantage of the expected chaos, which has lead Anti-Virus vendor Trend Micro offer a premium service of year-2000 virus information.
Trend Micro is joining other security vendors in taking extra steps to protect users against year-2000-related viruses through updates to identify date based attacks, a 24-7 support service as the New Year draws near, and a Web site to provide file updates and to identify hoaxes as they appear.
"We put together a product, a service, and we're providing a Web site with what is real-and not real-about Y2K hoaxes," said Dan Schrader, vice president of new technology at Trend Micro. "We are trying to address concerns that customers have come to us about Y2K and what they can do about it."
Trend's Global Y2K Internet content security readiness program, expected to become available Monday, includes the Y2K Virus Watch Web site at www.y2kvirus.com. The core of the Trend Micro Y2K service will the company's InterScan 2000 Suite for Windows NT.
Regardless of potential year-2000 communications chaos, analysts believe that being informed and prepared to protect against malicious code needs to be an ongoing effort.
"There might be some problems with people that don't pay for, haven't updated, or don't pay attention to their anti-virus [software], but the awareness of the problem of the [year-2000] virus at all different levels has increased dramatically over the past year, for obvious reasons," said Chris Christiansen, an analyst at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass.
The InterScan 2000 Product Suite, including the special Y2K Customer Support Package, starts at $1,085 for up to 25 users. The Customer Support Package is only available for a limited time, from Nov. 1, 1999 through Feb. 29, 1999.
Trend Micro Inc., in Cupertino, Calif., is at www.antivirus.com.
This story from Infoworld.com Copyright © 1999 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
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