AT&T upgrades Net security tools

The enhancements, which will be incorporated early next year, are designed to provide enterprises with protection from worms and viruses, without forcing customers to install firewalls at each location in a network, the company said.

The worm and virus mitigation tools will be added to AT&T?s network-based firewall. The tools are designed to find and stop worms and viruses before they infect systems within AT&T?s global IP network, the company said.

Earlier this year, AT&T announced tools for tackling denial-of-service and distributed denial-of-service attacks. In such attacks, networks are deluged with millions of requests for service, which can cripple servers and routers, resulting in downtime.

"By using the network as a key security component, our customers can reduce the complexity of the overall security system," Kathleen Flaherty, AT&T's chief marketing officer, said in a statement. "And reduced complexity can help make their operations much more secure."