In the mid 1980s, programmers in Pakistan released the very first PC virus, dubbed "the Brain." In 1988, a graduate student at Cornell University released a program on the early Internet that disabled over 6,000 computers. This was the first widely distributed computer attack, and marked the first sentence levied for this sort of computer crime. Computer viruses were now a very real threat and the endpoint security market was born.

According to Gartner, the market is dominated by three antivirus vendors (McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro), which represent 85 percent of the market share. As of 2005, enterprise antivirus, antispyware, personal firewall, and desktop HIPS (host-based intrusion prevention) products made up the majority of the $2.2 billion endpoint security market. By 2010, Gartner anticipates the market will grow to nearly $3.6 billion.

Evolving Security Solutions Face an Evolving Threat

Viruses and attacks have come a long way since the 80s. In a recent study conducted for the European Network and Information Security Industry (ENISA) by S21sec, a Spanish information security consulting firm, the most common infection methods detected include browser exploits (65 percent); e-mail attachments (13 percent); operating system exploits (11 percent); and downloaded Internet files (9 percent). The same study also estimated that more than 60 percent of the exploits related to botnets (a particularly insidious threat that ultimately leads to a computer being controlled by a malicious outside party) are browser exploits. The combination of infection vectors is an indication of the rise of blended threats, or threats that combine vulnerabilities to violate computer security. Only a multi-layered security solution can hope to successfully confront blended threats.