How SaaS Can Eliminate Malware and Worms

By Jodi On October 27, 2010 · In SaaS

Worms and other types of malware have been around since the early 1980’s, but lately we’ve been hearing more and more about them affecting enterprise and corporate servers. In fact, just this past summer, we were introduced to stuxnet, a new type of worm designed specifically to target the databases maintained by companies. Once it reaches its destination, a stuxnet “spies on and reprograms industrial systems”, according to Wikipedia.

Photo by zabdiel

But, with today’s organizations housing such confidential data as customer contact information or bank account and credit card numbers, protection is of the utmost importance.

SaaS is proving to be a highly effective way to eliminate these security threats, providing protection that traditional, out-of-the-box on premise systems cannot. How can SaaS help you keep your environment fully guarded from worms and other malware?

Fewer Servers = Greater Control

When you subscribe to a SaaS system, the deployment and management of the servers is the responsibility of your vendor. That means, you have less to worry about within your own infrastructure. You’ll have fewer hardware components to monitor, so you can watch more closely and more readily detect a problem if it occurs.

It’s Up to the Vendor

With SaaS, it’s your service provider who needs to be concerned about worms and other malware. The majority of SaaS vendors leverage the latest security techniques and solutions, to preserve the integrity of their data centers at all times. And, most of them are running platforms other than Windows, which has been shown to pose the highest risk when it comes to these types of threats.

Infections are Easily Contained

Companies may be concerned about security when their SaaS solutions are integrated with their own on-premise applications. But, since these integrations typically take place via a standard API, the risk on an infection spreading from the SaaS environment to the on-premise one is almost non-existent.