Secunia and Foursys announce new VAR partnership

Secunia, a global supplier of Software Vulnerability Management products and services, has signed a Value Added Reseller agreement with network security specialist Foursys. The agreement covers the full Secunia product range including vulnerability management, security patching and PC protection. All products will be sold and implemented by Foursys Security Consultants, into NHS, government, education, SMB and enterprise organisations. Secunia was selected as a best-of-breed solution, based on its technical merits, channel model and interoperability with Foursys' product portfolio.

The Secunia product set provides Foursys with a solution to meet the vulnerability management requirements of its customers, through application and operating system patching. James Miller, Managing Director at Foursys commented; "Secunia extends and complements our existing security product portfolio, and directly meets market demand as organisations become increasing aware of the necessity for vulnerability and patch management within the technology stack."

Miller continued; "Many of our customers have very large and diverse networks with limited resource available to dedicate to security. Being able to quickly and easily security patch applications on hundreds or even thousands of machines is a real benefit to our clients and can significantly enhance the security of the whole network."

Victoria Bentham, UK and Ireland Regional Director at Secunia added; "The new partnership with Foursys is an excellent opportunity for Secunia as we extend our footprint in the UK and Ireland. Foursys' security focused, technically advanced and customer-centric approach is a great match for Secunia, and we look forward to adding new value to their existing client service offerings."

Vulnerabilities need to be managed intelligently

Vulnerabilities are a root cause of security issues – an error in software that can work as an entry point for hackers, and can be exploited to gain access to IT systems. In 2014, 15,435 vulnerabilities were discovered according to data from Secunia Research and even though patches are available for 83% of the vulnerabilities on the day they become publically known, the patches are not necessarily applied by IT teams in a timely manner.

The challenge for professional IT teams is to obtain and maintain a complete overview of all applications on all devices in and connected to their infrastructure, and correlating this inventory with intelligence about new vulnerabilities, solution status and patch availability for those applications. To stay on top of the risk, vulnerability management and patch management tools are essential.

Private users are also challenged by patching

Patching is not only a challenge for professionals, but for private users as well, as demonstrated by data in the most recent UK Country Report, published just last week by Secunia: The report shows that one in ten applications on private UK PCs is unpatched, even though a patch is available, and that 81% of UK PCs are still running Adobe Flash Player 16 which is no longer supported by the vendor. End-of-life applications are a popular attack vector because they no longer receive security patches, which further highlights the importance of effective vulnerability management.

To stay secure, private users can use one of the security update tools available, such as the Secunia PSI 3.0, a free computer security scanner which identifies software applications that are insecure and in need of security updates. The tool has been downloaded by over 8 million PC users globally to detect vulnerable and outdated programs and plug-ins.