THE WHATIS.COM WORD-OF-THE-DAY January 27, 2003 heuristics
______________ TODAY'S SPONSOR: Free Enterprise Storage whitepapers Download the key papers you need today to make better-informed decisions. Papers from Hitachi, IBM, Computer Associates, Sun, EMC, HP, and more. Click here to access SearchStorage.com's white papers section. http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/whitepapers3/0,,sid5,00.html ______________ TODAY'S WORD: heuristics See our complete definition with hyperlinks at http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci876400,00.html Heuristics is the application of experience-derived knowledge to a problem and is sometimes used to describe software that screens and filters out messages likely to contain a computer virus or other undesirable content. A heuristic (pronounced hyu-RIS-tik and from the Greek "heuriskein" meaning "to discover") is a "rule-of-thumb." Heuristics software looks for known sources, commonly-used text phrases, and transmission or content patterns that experience has shown to be associated with e-mail containing viruses. Because many companies or users receive a large volume of e-mail and because legitimate e-mail may also fall into the pattern, heuristics software sometimes results in many "false positives," discouraging its use. Security experts note that, although such software needs to get better, it is a valuable and necessary tool. RELATED TERMS: virus http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci213306,00.html heuristic http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci212246,00.html ______________________ SELECTED LINKS: VNUNet offers an article, "Heuristics is the way forward." http://www.vnunet.com/News/1129441 Symantec has a white paper called "Understanding Heuristics: Symantec's Bloodhound Technology." http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/reference/heuristc.pdf SearchSecurity.com offers a number of white papers related to virus detection and other security topics. http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/whitepapersByCategory/0,293837,sid14_tax292039_idx0_off10,00.html ______________________ QUIZ #35 | Common Vulnerabilities Take our quiz to test your knowledge about common security vulnerabilities and learn how to defend your organization against them with the resources we've collected. http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci875285,00.html ______________________ WHATIS.COM POLL | How do you stay on top? 57% of the readers who responded to our last poll said they hadn't been sent for any IT training in 2002. We'd like to know: How do you stay on top of what's new in your area of IT? http://www.whatis.com/poll ______________________ REAL LIFE CHALLENGE | Upgrade to Win2k server or wait for .NET? Ned is an IT manager in a Windows NT environment with a couple of hundred workstations and several servers. Ned's CEO wants him to determine whether it would be better for the company upgrade to a Windows 2000 server, or wait until the Windows .NET server (now called Microsoft Windows Server 2003) comes out. Can you advise? http://whatis.discussions.techtarget.com/WebX?[EMAIL PROTECTED]@.1dcfae0e/211!viewtype=threadDate&skip=&expand= ______________________________ RECENT ADDITIONS AND UPDATES [1] R/2 http://searchsap.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid21_gci876431,00.html [2] X# http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci875257,00.html [3] data source name http://searchvb.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid8_gci874018,00.html [4] systems thinking http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci874009,00.html [5] Advanced Planner and Optimizer http://searchsap.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid21_gci874121,00.html ____________________________________________________________________ ::::::::::::::::::: WHATIS.COM CONTACTS ::::::::::::::::::: LOWELL THING, Site Editor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ____________________________________________________________________ MARGARET ROUSE, Associate Editor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ___________________________________________________________________ :::::::::::::::::::: ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER ::::::::::::::::::::: Published by TechTarget (http://www.techtarget.com) TechTarget - The Most Targeted IT Media Copyright 2003, All Rights Reserved. Unsubscribe from 'Word of the Day' - Simply Reply to this Email with REMOVE within the Body or Subject > or - Go to: http://WhatIs.techtarget.com/register - Log in to edit your profile. - Click on the link to Edit email subscriptions. - Uncheck the box next to the newsletter you wish to unsubscribe from. - When finished, click "Save Changes to My Profile."
