Last year, Upwork had a problem: There was no way to block or eliminate zero-day threats hidden in the file uploads and downloads necessary for their business to function.
A couple of weeks ago, Upwork Head of Information Security Teza Mukkavilli and OPSWAT VP of Marketing Horacio Zambrano presented on how Upwork solved this problem by implementing OPSWAT MetaDefender data Sanitization (CDR) for blocking malicious file uploads and downloads.
Watch the webinar below:
Upwork is a freelancing platform used by millions of clients to find reliable, available contractors. Naturally, clients and freelancers have to upload and download many files to and from the platform, over a million files per day by Mukkavilli's estimation.
File uploads and downloads are always a security risk. To help combat this risk, Upwork deployed OPSWAT multi-scanning technology. But while most threats, especially known threats, were identified and blocked, sophisticated attacks were still getting through, as many as 3-4 malware attacks per week. Clients and freelancers alike began to express their concerns to Upwork about the lack of security.
After prototyping a number of solutions, including sandboxes and other multi-scanners, Upwork selected OPSWAT's data sanitization (CDR) in order to remove threats from files.
The results have been tremendous: MetaDefender was able to completely eliminate zero-day file attacks using data sanitization, compared to only 70% blocked by standard AV.
Additionally, the data sanitization solution comes with almost no maintenance or overhead once it's deployed, and with little to no impact on user experience. All files with active objects are sanitized; 75% of files are processed and ready in less than a second, and 99% within less than 6 seconds.
The Upwork security workflow
Implementation has been relatively seamless, and during the webinar Mukkavilli compared Upwork's positive experience with data sanitization (CDR) against prototyped integrations with sandboxes, which were high-maintenance and negatively impacted operations.
Watch the webinar above to learn more about Upwork's successful use of data sanitization. Contact OPSWAT to talk to a sales representative about adding data sanitization to your security strategy.
