NVDi Support News & Alerts is used to disseminate time-sensitive information to our customer base. This includes such things as security warnings, announcements of planned (or unplanned) outages and notifications of updates to the technical support knowledge base.

Mostly, of course, this means security alerts.

What happened to the old email alerts? Well, times change and so did the methods used by the dirtbags who write malware.

Not too long ago, there was a steady stream of new viruses and worms. When one showed up that looked particularly threatening, we issued a short, snappy storm warning to our user community. Typically, we’d need to do this every week or so.

These days, the bad guys concentrate on building extensive, low profile networks of infected machines. These “zombie farms” are rented out at a tidy profit for various nefarious purposes. (Most spam is sent this way, for example.) They maintain and expand their networks by releasing many strains — sometimes several each day — of the same basic piece of malware. We’re not fending off a bunch of smash-and-grab artists anymore. Instead, we’re dealing with organized crime and this sort of low-intensity warfare requires different reporting techniques.

There are several ways to monitor this information…

• Check the web log directly. The most recent set of posts (usually about 10) are always available right up front at https://news.nvdi.net. And the entire database is searchable.
• Monitor our news feed. Just about any modern web browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc.) has a built-in feed reader, as do most email programs. There are also any number of stand-alone feed reader programs. (I like FeedDemon.)
• If you have a Twitter account, follow @nvdinews to be notified when new material is posted here.
• If you’d just rather get the occasional email, you can subscribe to our email feed. You’ll receive a daily email containing any posts made that day. If there’s no new material, you won’t get the email.
• If you really need direct email notification of particularly hot topics, put in a request via email. Please note that this special email distribution list is limited to NVDi customers and associates and that we only dispatch notifications of the highest priority postings.