A Bit In 9 Saves Time?

In case you missed Matt Hartley’s commentary on Bit9 in yesterday’s IT Professionals, here’s a link so you can take a peek. But what is Bit9, you may be wondering? Peter Svensson of the Associated Press (via The Seattle Post-Intelligencer) writes:

Is “malfile.exe” a virus? What does “hmtcd.dll” do?

PC users sometimes come upon unfamiliar files on their hard drives, and identifying them is often a challenge. Many were fooled by a hoax e-mail that circulated a few years ago, instructing them to delete the alleged virus file “jdbgmgr.exe.” The file was perfectly innocuous, but it wasn’t easy to know that.

Internet security company Bit9 Inc. this week launched fileadvisor.bit9.com, a Web site that attempts to bridge that knowledge gap. Visitors can search data on 25 million Windows PC files, collected from Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp., the National Institute of Standards and Technology and other sources…