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| An adaptive and collaborative network of machines working together to identify and stop emerging threats. | A top-down network of individual machines that rely on periodic broadcasts from a central server. |
| It can defend automatically against a wide spectrum of software attacks, including spam, spyware, phishing, hijacking, hacking, and all types of viruses. | Humans must defend the network, which is specialized to cover a specific type of attack. |
| The client machines are smart enough to intercept unknown threats, and to alert Threat Central automatically. | Machines typically cannot recognize unknown attacks and therefore can be compromised. Alerts are rarely automated. |
| Threat Central has an expert system to test and grade unknown threats a gainst a severity scale. | Humans must test and grade all threats in a lab setting. |
| The severity scale covers all types of threats: spam, spyware, phishing, hijacking, hacking, and all types of viruses. | The network assigns severity scales only within the type of attack it is designed for. |
| With minimal human intervention, Threat Central will update definition files for these threats. | Humans must update definition files. |
| Threat updates are posted to a Collaborative Internet Security Network (CISN); updates are relayed securely, inexpensively, and therefore continuously, throughout the network. A datacenter broadcasts updates to all machines individually on a schedule. | Due to the cost involved, updates are made periodically and not continuously. |
| Elapsed time from detection to update for infectious threats: one hour (typical). | Elapsed time from detection to update: 10+ hours (typical). |
| Number of codebases required: ONE. | Number of codebases required: THREE OR MORE. |