Symantec Adds an Anti-Phishing Tool to its Portfolio

Symantec has decided that it's time to offer protection against phishing and has announced the acquisition of the Whole Security company, whose technology analyzes the characteristics and actions of viruses, worms and other malicious codes, to offer real-time protection against these threats without the need for traditional security signatures.


WholeSecurity's Confidence Online analyzes viruses, trojans, keystroke loggers type programs and phishing sites; by making comparisons, it can identify if a certain site has harmful potential or not.

Behavior-based security technology identifies online threats such as worms, viruses, trojans, keystroke loggers, and phishing sites by their actions and characteristics.

WholeSecurity's Confidence Online analyzes the behavior exhibited by these threats against hundreds of detection modules to determine whether the active processes or web sites are safe or malicious. This technology can immediately detect and mitigate unknown threats by their behavior without traditional signatures or patches, thereby protecting users against zero-day attacks.


Confidence Online Phish Finder provides real-time, browser-based protection from fraudulent websites. It powers the AccountGuard feature of the eBay toolbar. The Phish Report Network (PRN) powered by Confidence Online is the first worldwide anti-phishing aggregation service that enables companies to report and block phishing web sites and better protect online consumers worldwide.

The transaction is expected to close in October, 2005.