Counterpane Managed Security Monitoring Protects Customers From Being Damaged By MS-SQL Slammer Worm

Customers pleased with quick response and assurance

CUPERTINO, Calif., January 29, 2003 - Counterpane Internet Security, Inc., developer and acknowledged leader of Managed Security Monitoring (MSM) services, today announced successful protection provided to its customer base against the MS-SQL Slammer Worm.

Early in the morning on Saturday, January 25, 2003, someone released into the wild a self-replicating worm that preyed on a buffer overflow exploit in the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and MSDE (Microsoft Data Engine). The worm enjoyed explosive growth, rapidly infecting over 35,000 hosts world-wide and bringing traffic on the Internet to a crawl.

"Counterpane contacted us quickly upon discovering Slammer," said David MacLeod, Director & Chief Information Security Officer of The Regence Group. "We were given expert recommendations for mitigating the problem, and assurances that we were being protected by Counterpane. With Counterpane's assistance, it took us about 20 minutes to deal with this epidemic, while other companies in our space spent their entire weekend containing the damage."

Counterpane detected the attacks shortly after they began. In most cases, the attack was detected over an hour and a half before customer's realized it themselves, 30 minutes before a major worldwide ISP mailing list began noticing trouble, 6 hours before trouble reports began to appear on the BUGTRAQ full-disclosure security mailing list, and 6 hours before major ISPs started taking action to filter the attacks.

"Our success in keeping our customers protected through this attack is because of our real-time detection and expert response," said Joe D'Angelo, Chief Information Officer of Counterpane Internet Security.

About Counterpane

Counterpane Internet Security, Inc., is the innovator and acknowledged leader in providing Managed Security Monitoring (MSM) services. MSM combines people and technology to safeguard businesses. Working from a network of technically sophisticated Secure Operations Centers (SOCs) and using progressive analysis tools, Counterpane has built the most advanced analysis, correlation, detection, and diagnosis technology, comprising a Sentry monitoring probe on the customer's network and the Socrates knowledge base inside the SOCs. Using this technology, Counterpane's expert Security Analysts are able to detect security incidents-both external intrusions and insider attacks-in real time, and tailor immediate, effective responses for its customers. The company is funded by Accel Partners, Amerindo Investment Advisors, Inc., Comcast Interactive Capital, LP, Bessemer Venture Partners, Dell Ventures, LP, Meritech Capital Partners, LP, Morgan Stanley Venture Partners and Symphony Technology Group. Headquarters are located at 1090 La Avenida, Mountain View, California, USA. Phone: 650-404-2400, Fax: 650-903-0461, Website: www.counterpane.com.

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