How Deep Instinct uses deep learning to advance malware prevention

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Malware today moves so fast that if you blink, you might miss it. The reality is that traditional security solutions such as antivirus are ineffective in preventing malware from infecting corporate networks.

According to SonicWall, there were 5.4 billion malware attacks in 2021. At the heart of the challenge is the fact that the moment a human analyst detects malicious activity in the environment, they are already too late.

In an attempt to combat malware threats, cybersecurity vendor Deep Instinct has announced the release of a deep learning-based solution: Deep Instinct Prevention for Applications, a new on-demand anti-malware solution.

Deep Instinct Prevention for Applications uses artificial intelligence (AI) to scan files via API and identify known, unknown, and zero-day threats in less than 20 milliseconds. It's an approach designed to protect web applications and cloud storage from malicious attacks, and can scale to scan tens of millions of files per day.

For enterprises, Deep Instinct's solution highlights that deep learning could provide the answer to malware threats that travel at machine speed and bypass the defenses of traditional antivirus solutions.

The problem with antivirus solutions

When it comes to security solutions, antivirus tools have been a staple of endpoint security for years. Today, many businesses rely on antivirus and antimalware solutions to protect against known common threats.

The problem with these solutions is that they are often slow, comparing activity against threat intelligence feeds to identify if software is malicious. At the same time, they often miss malicious content stored in PDF and Office files.

“Office files containing unknown malware are very often ignored by traditional AV and endpoint solutions and have a high probability of executing an attack if opened by an end user,” said Karen Crowley, Director product solutions at Deep Instinct.

"Traditional solutions need to see the behavior of the file after execution to stop it, but by then the damage is already done. Attackers are getting smarter to evade sandboxes and AV solutions and files pass undetected,” Crowley said.

Crowley says that by building its deep learning capability from scratch, Deep Instinct doesn't have to call the cloud to decide whether an activity is malicious or not.

It can automatically scan a wide range of file types, including office files, PDF files, and .exe files, and detect malicious activity at machine speed.

A look at the antivirus market

The announcement comes as the global antivirus software market continues to grow, with researchers valuing the market at $3.92 billion in 2021 and forecasting it to reach a value of $4.06 billion in 2022 .

Deep Instinct's new solution competes with these traditional antivirus solutions and aims to provide an alternative option for securing enterprise environments against advanced unknown malware threats.

The provider is in a strong position to advance its market position, having raised a $67m extension to its Series D funding round last year, which had already closed at $100m dollars the same year.

One of the major antivirus vendors competing with Deep Instinct's offering is McAfee, which...