scandoo

Scream if you want to go faster!

You thought Scandoo was fast? Thanks to ScanSafe - we've got the fastest real-time security technologies in the world - but now we're going to be sending you Scandoo verdicts even faster. 

So now, as soon as Scandoo thinks a site is most likely to be safe, a paler 'scanning' verdict icon is displayed, which is followed by the final 'still' verdict icon.

        Means we have started the Scandoo scanning and analysis process.

        Means that we're pretty sure this site deserves the icon displayed.

        Means that all scanning and analysis processes are complete.

Why are we doing this?

Basically - we make sites jump through hoops to get their green, yellow, red or spider icons - every time we see them.

Scandoo is very different to other site advisory systems - we actually put search result destination/end pages through a system of security scanning and analysis processes in real time, every time - rather than fetch a simple older verdict from a static database.

It's a complex process that now generates a 'first' verdict - pretty accurately, and very quickly. Then it does the analysis required for a 'final' verdict – this is the security equivalent of looking both ways before crossing. This will often be the same as the ‘first’ verdict, but we think it pays to be certain.

Let us know what you think of this change - any ideas on how we could improve this? We're all ears.

To scan or not to scan... that is the question...

We received an e-mail recently asking:

Why do we scan and analyse every link - and surely it's not in real time?

The answer's to the first bit is quite simple:

Would you cross a road on the basis it was safe at one point over a month ago?

Quite. We think the same way about visiting websites - as they can and do change as often as road traffic does - sometimes safe, sometimes not ...

So we always 'look both ways' every time before 'crossing the road' to visit a site.  The only way to do this properly is to scan and analyse every time.

We put every search result through a whole heap of ScanSafe processes, multi-layered malware scanning, dynamic heuristic analysis, multiple list verification and content investigation - amongst other analysis processes - it's what it takes to be safe on the web today!

And for the real time question...

Scandoo icons are always generated in real-time based on real-time analysis - We can do this in real time thanks to the really clever system architecture and parallel processing technology. You can read more about it on ScanSafe's website. The service most of this technology came from is a business service that's a secure web proxy to access the internet through - literally scanning web traffic so quickly that users can't tell if they are going straight out to the internet or being scanned.

Mighty clever stuff if you ask me!