Derby County Football Club has
replaced its anti-virus systems with advanced anti-malware
technology, following an attempted hacking attack on its
networks.
The football club stepped up its security after discovering that
its anti-virus system had failed to detect Trojans that could allow
hackers to access its networks.
It replaced the system with technology from
Prevx which
disrupts malware by blocking any unknown program running on the
network.
The club was forced to shut down its network of 100 PCs in
September last year after discovering copies of the Rbot worm,
which installs a backdoor for hackers, on a laptop. System logs
showed that hackers had attempted to use the Rbot backdoor to break
into the football club's network.
Louise Schoeman, head of IT at Derby County, said, "The clean up
took a day and a half. We removed anything that was malicious. We
changed every password on our systems."
Schoeman said the club had already been experiencing technical
problems with its anti-virus software before the attempted
hack.
"The anti-virus ran from a central console, but it kept failing
to download and send anti-virus updates to all PCs. The only way to
solve the problem was to reinstall it. When you are talking about
100 PCs, that causes a lot of problems," she said.
The club initially used the Prevx software to clean up its
systems after discovering the Rbot infection.It decided to buy the
product after the clean-up revealed several examples of other
dangerous malware that had been missed by the anti-virus
system.
The club is using the system to monitor each of its PCs from a
central console that reports on the history of infections on each
machine and identifies the software each is running.
It identifies and blocks malware by comparing it to a database
of legitimate software and monitoring the behaviour of unknown
programs. If malware is discovered, the system shares details of
the threat with other Prevx users.
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