Comodo has launched its website malware scanning service SiteInspector
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Certificate authority and security provider Comodo released its malware scanning and blacklist monitoring solution for websites, SiteInspector, on Wednesday.
According to the press release, SiteInspector Pro (the paid version) will automatically scan three pages of a domain daily, and check that a website is not blacklisted. It will email users if a problem is detected, and will give threat mitigation advice if malware is found. The free version only allows scanning on one page at a time.
The name, and service, sound similar to existing malware scanning provider SiteLock. SiteInspector also has some similar features to that of Runa Capital-funded StopTheHacker.
Web hosts have been partnering with malware scanning providers recently to bolster their security offerings as clients are becoming increasingly aware of the threats malware pose to their websites, blogs and Facebook pages. In March, web hosting provider A Small Orange partnered with CodeGuard, and StopTheHacker.
“Any service that informs website owners that their site is infected is beneficial. Comodo’s SiteInspector seems similar to a number of other tools in the marketplace that can perform malware scanning,” CodeGuard CEO David Moeller says in an email to the WHIR. “CodeGuard approaches website protection and malware identification and remediation in a fundamentally different way. Since we track all site changes, whether malware is injected with the intent to distribute it via a drive-by-download or a mass-meshing type attack, or black hat SEOs inject parasitic links or code to perform site redirecting, CodeGuard will inform the website owner. And then we provide a way for the website owner to quickly remediate the problem by rolling back to a prior clean version of their website. At this point, we can provide assistance to the customers to make sure their site is sufficiently hardened to prevent future attacks.”
In October 2011, certificate authority GeoTrust launched its anti-malware scanning service with a considerably less catchy name, “Web Site Anti-Malware Scan”.
Comodo’s new service and GeoTrust’s service seem to be after the same market, and their primary business is not anti-malware scanning, unlike StopTheHacker and SiteLock. A few of the most obvious differences is GeoTrust’s service delivers its service exclusively through channel partners, and its service automatically checks up to 50 web pages daily for malware strains, while Comodo’s service is delivered directly to customers (for now) and its scans are limited to three pages of one domain.
Comodo will offer SiteInspector for free to directly to end-users through its website, and has built it in its browser, Comodo Dragon. With the Comodo Dragon integration, users can run a malware scan on the web page they are visiting by clicking on the SiteInspector icon at the top of the interface. Comodo CEO and chief architect Melih Abdulhayoglu says in an email to the WHIR that “SiteInspector will most definitely be pushed through the reseller channel as well very soon.”
“SiteInspector dramatically reduces the time between problem identification to problem resolution for business websites,” Abduhayoglu said in a statement. “No longer will businesses have to wait for angry customers to complain that their website contains malicious content. To take advantage of this essential service, webmasters just need to take a few minutes to sign up and configure the service. SiteInspector will do the rest.”
The release of this new offering comes less than a month after Comodo launched its Consumer Advocacy campaign to give consumers and businesses education information about taking the proper security measures to protect themselves from a range of threats, including malware.
Talk back: Is the accuracy of a malware scanning service important to you as a web hosting provider? Do you partner with any of the malware scanning providers currently? Which ones? Let us know your thoughts in a comment.
About Nicole Henderson
Nicole Henderson writes full-time for the Web Host Industry Review where she covers daily news and features online, as well as in print. She has a bachelor of journalism from Ryerson University in Toronto, and has been writing for the WHIR since September 2010. You can find her on Twitter @NicoleHenderson.
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Article source: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/certificate-authority-comodo-releases-website-malware-scanning-tool-siteinspector
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