Bethesda, MD (PRWEB) November 4, 2008  —  Arxan Technologies, a leading provider of application hardening solutions designed to protect software applications from tampering, unauthorized access, piracy and malware insertion, today announced a major update to GuardIT, version 4.0.

An intelligent software protection solution, GuardIT defends, detects and reacts to attempted attacks in order to safeguard a company's software assets.  GuardIT fortifies software applications through patented Guard technology that quickly and efficiently secures commercial software applications and their associated copy protection systems (such as license management, DRM or conditional access).  The solution enables organizations to rapidly and easily deploy a sophisticated and surgically precise "line of defense" for software applications, without impacting legitimate end users' experience.

GuardIT is now a comprehensive and integrated protection platform that supports various languages, operating systems, compilers and chip-sets.  GuardIT 4.0 features significant upgrades across the board including:

• Greater Security and New Features
  • Stronger anti-tamper for .NET with dynamic integrity verification through Arxan’s Checksum Guard.
  • Enhanced ability to detect hacking with additional anti-debug techniques to detect if an application is under the attack or control of a debugger.
  • Increased flexibility in reacting and responding to attacks, including improved information gathering options. Arxan’s policy-based Guard reaction framework allows customers to select how Guard-enabled applications can react at run-time, ranging from tracking to termination.
  • Enhanced support for 64-Bit Shared Objects for Linux.
    
• Increased Automation and Usability
  • Further automation of the protection process such as the auto-population of configuration parameters and base protection functionality, which aids the customer in developing the protection.
  • Improved usability throughout the protection process for faster deployment.
    
• Continued support for 3rd party compilers and languages
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 support.
  • Microsoft Visual Basic.NET compatibility.

To protect software applications and their intellectual property (IP) from attacks, GuardIT relies on an extensive network of Guards, which monitor the software application and each other, providing deeply-embedded binary-level protection for specified functions that are critical and/or vulnerable.

"Application hardening and shielding provide protection for an organization's software-based assets (especially those placed on machines, sites and locations that the organization doesn't control) from tampering, reverse engineering and attack.  They also provide several types of application-level security without requiring developers to natively modify source code," said Joseph Feiman and Neil MacDonald, VPs & Gartner Fellows [Source: "Hype Cycle for Data and Application Security" September 30, 2008].

GuardIT automatically inserts Guard protection directly into the compiled binary of the software application using a specified configuration, with no modifications required to the source code.  An unprecedented level of sophistication is achieved in minutes that would otherwise have not been possible.  GuardIT's protection is also designed to neatly fit into existing software development cycles without impacting release schedules.  GuardIT protection can also be integrated into nightly builds via the command line interface.

"Software applications are the new attack vector of choice for hackers," said Mike Dager, CEO and Chairman of Arxan Technologies. "Attackers are working to subvert software applications to compromise functionality, steal intellectual property and gain inappropriate or unlawful access.  Enterprises and software publishers need to defend against and closely monitor these threats to minimize risk and maximize their revenues.  Our advanced application protection technologies accomplish these goals across a range of platforms and languages, and we are pleased to release the next version of GuardIT to the market."