Glasswall CDR vs competitors

Glasswall is a cybersecurity company that keeps government departments, intelligence and defense agencies, and other organizations around the world secure against file-based threats. Our zero-trust approach to file protection removes file-based threats at lightning speed, allowing users to access files with full confidence. Glasswall CDR (Content Disarm and Reconstruction) is a simple way to protect against sophisticated threats.

Each day brings fresh file-based challenges that can leave security teams around the world facing increasing risks to network security.

At Glasswall, we see three main approaches to dealing with file-based threats – none of which offer sufficient protection alone:

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Other CDR vendors

Zero-trust protection – using known good rather than detecting known bad
Removes file components that don’t comply with desired file specification
Configurable policies
Minimal maintenance required
Some flexible deployments options

Use of non-proprietary third-party libraries by some vendors means that some files don’t match the manufacturer’s specification, leaving potential risks present within processed files.
Most supported file types are not processed in their intended format – instead the usability of a file is removed by transforming it into a flat file type with limited functionality.
In some cases threat reporting in some cases lacks granular detail. Most solutions are unable to report on all non-conforming components in a file.
Large-scale file processing may not be possible for these solutions – limiting their usefulness for high-volume data transfers.

Detection-based solutions

Sandboxes and antivirus solutions offer some protection against known or less sophisticated threats
Custom rule creation for individual environments
Access to large, regularly updated threat intelligence directories

By their very nature, detection-based solutions can only protect against what they have seen before – leaving an organization vulnerable to existing but unseen and zero-day threats.
They require an active line out to ingest updates to their threat identification libraries – compromising air-gapped networks.
Anti-virus solutions can contribute to a significant amount of false positives – negatively impacting the end-user and causing unnecessary work for security teams.
Sandbox solutions take time to process a file – causing disruption to business workflows and end-user experience.
Cyber criminals can deploy complex measures that may help malicious files to evade sandboxes – detonating after the file has been processed.

Machine Learning and next-gen tools

Analysis of threat patterns helps to detect more sophisticated or zero-day threats
Allows security teams to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks

Machine learning processes can create gigantic amounts of data, causing a data storage headache for security teams.
Machine learning can increase the number of false positives and negatives – they are reliant on clean training data and before it can be effective, they have to learn from difficult to attain data of the ‘norm’.
Some evidence suggests cyber criminals may be able to leverage AI and Machine Learning solutions via data designed to trick it to act on their behalf.
Alone, these are not fool proof solutions for the provision of comprehensive file-protection.

How is Glasswall different?

CDR process fourth step: delivering a clean file

No trade-off between security and usability

Security teams no longer need to choose between file security or speed and usability. Our CDR technology has no reliance on detection, treating all files as malicious, rebuilding them back to their manufacturers ‘known-good’ standard. This provides rapid zero-trust file protection that maintains the usability of original documents.

Process files at scale and in seconds

Glasswall CDR can process files at massive scale, in seconds. Our unrivalled capabilities can be deployed in minutes on-premises, within air-gapped environments, or in both public and private clouds as we adhere to open standards. We deploy our solution into a Kubernetes cluster using Helm Charts, Terraform and container images, making setup rapid and maintenance updates real-time. This can also operate within a traditional hypervisor that is powered by VMware.

Unmatched understanding of files and complete analysis of risks

Our CDR technology provides unmatched understanding of files, providing complete analysis of the risks and active content found within them. Security teams are given the ability to remove risk and shape their security policy to match their risk appetite. The file-based threats are removed, and the document structure is completely repaired to make the protected file safe to open.

	Glasswall CDR	Other CDR solutions	Detection- based	AI & Machine Learning
Zero-trust approach to files
Zero-day file protection				*Some protection
Can be implemented anywhere a file is in motion or at rest
Rapid delivery across on-premises, air-gapped or cloud (both public and private) environments
File protection at massive scale
NCSC pattern for Safely Importing Data compliant
NSA 'Raise the Bar' compliant
Highly compliant with the NSA’s Inspection and Sanitization Guidance standards
Sensitive word detection in images
Visual object detection
Redaction of sensitive text strings in files