BEDMINSTER, N.J. -- AT&T today introduced two new security services, AT&T Internet Protect and AT&T Personal Firewall, to give businesses and government agencies worldwide some of the most powerful weapons available to date in their ever-increasing battle against cyber security attacks.

According to Computer Economics in Carlsbad, Calif., the worldwide impact of cyber attacks has grown steadily from $3.3 billion in 1997 to an estimated $12 billion in 2003.  As a result, protecting networks against malicious intruders and unauthorized activities has become critical to business today.

The new capabilities provide early warning of potential threats and give businesses and government agencies the ability to secure and more effectively protect their networks and employee workstations from cyber attacks.  With the introduction of these services, AT&T is extending the management of security vulnerabilities from a company's network to all of its remote end points.

Many managed security service providers today offer services that address cyber security attacks after they have affected a customer's network and applications. AT&T Internet Protect, on the other hand, is designed to alert businesses via a secure Web portal to potential threats before they become full-blown attacks.  AT&T will notify customers within minutes of identifying critical malicious activity, including denial of service attacks, and provide recommended immediate action to be taken by the customer.

The company will back AT&T Internet Protect with a service level agreement.  If AT&T fails to notify a customer of a network-based denial of service attack before the customer reports it, the customer will be credited the charges for AT&T Internet Protect for that month's service.

AT&T Internet Protect Provides Early Warning of Potential Security Attacks

AT&T Internet Protect delivers on the company's commitment to turn its network inside out to give customers secure access to the inherent intelligence of its network. The service:

• Identifies early malicious activity,
• Proactively notifies customers, and
• Provides recommended mitigation steps.

"With AT&T Internet Protect and AT&T Personal Firewall, AT&T is changing the game and upping the ante in the fight against cyber security attacks", said Matthew Kovar, CFA, Yankee Group Security Solutions and Services Vice President.  "Over the last few years, AT&T has quietly been building a world-class managed security services portfolio backed by the innovation engine of AT&T Labs and a network management platform that is industry leading".

The underlying capabilities of AT&T Internet Protect were developed by AT&T Labs over the last few years to protect the company's own network by proactively searching out threats and destroying them before they became real attacks on AT&T's own network.   As a result of the company's own success in bullet-proofing its global network, it now is offering the service commercially to businesses.

The scale of the global AT&T IP network and the company's advanced management tools provide a significant advantage in the company's ability to identify early malicious activity and notify customers of potential attacks before they cripple customer networks. By analyzing 100 percent of real-time traffic on AT&T's industry-leading IP network and using heuristics and statistical models, AT&T's team of 350 security analysts can identify and pinpoint potential worms, viruses, denial of service attacks and other malicious activity before network performance is hampered.

"These capabilities illustrate our commitment to bring the innovations and technologies developed in AT&T Labs, as well as by leading security vendors, to deliver high-value solutions to address the most critical security challenges facing businesses today," said Eric Shepcaro, vice president, emerging services.   "AT&T Internet Protect is the direct result of our long-term investments, R&D and networking management expertise.  We believe it is this type of proactive incident management capability that businesses expect from a managed security services provider."

Later this year, AT&T Internet Protect will feature real-time mitigation of security threats for business customers.   The AT&T Internet Protect portal is accessible via the award-winning AT&T BusinessDirect(sm) online customer sales and servicing portal, which currently supports about half a million users.

AT&T Personal Firewall Centralizes Management of Remote Workstation Applications

With AT&T Personal Firewall, businesses can secure one of the most vulnerable points in their networking infrastructure--remote employee workstations and laptops.  The service enforces compliance with policies for firewall, anti-virus and software patch management; centralizes management tools for the control of remote end points; and gives customers control over the applications operating on employee machines.

The growing number of teleworkers has heightened the vulnerability of businesses to cyber security attacks, as employee workstations increasingly are used for general Internet use when not connected to the corporate network. As a result, viruses and worms can infect the machines and be spread when employees reconnect to the corporate network. In addition, employees sometimes also use company assets for unapproved purposes, loading unauthorized applications onto company workstations.

AT&T Personal Firewall automatically blocks known and unknown threats by proactively protecting remote employee workstations--and the larger enterprise network--from costly hacker attacks, including rapidly proliferating worms, Trojan horses, spyware and other malicious code.   The service is based on the endpoint security solution,  Zone Labs Integrity(tm), from Zone Labs Inc. of San Francisco.  It features endpoint security, remote access protection, intuitive end-user interface, central administration and policy enforcement tools as well as privacy and productivity tools.

AT&T Personal Firewall is available to customers of AT&T Virtual Tunnel Service (AVTS) Remote Access and Broadband Single User virtual private network customers, as well as Business Internet Service (BIS) Dial customers.

Later this year, AT&T will start bundling the AT&T Internet Protect and AT&T Personal Firewall so that businesses, after being alerted to potential security threats, can automatically load the appropriate anti-virus software patches on employee workstations.

AT&T Internet Protect and AT&T Personal Firewall are part of the company's comprehensive portfolio of managed security services, which include firewall, intrusion detection and token authentication. The company also provides a wide range of professional services, such as risk analysis, vulnerability assessments and ethical hacking.

More information on AT&T Internet Protect and AT&T Personal Firewall is available at www.business.att.com.