Despite millions in investment corporations attest to the failure of corporations can attest to the failure of conventional defense tools in the battle against targeted or sophisticated attacks.

Antivirus or HIPS tools offer a reactive rather than a proactive approach to detecting malicious programs and behaviors. They use signature bases restricted to known threats and often find themselves helpless against any new attacks.

Furthermore, hackers devise advanced camouflage mechanisms to cover their tracks and thereby manage to make their way past these signature-based protections.

Attacks are considered to be sophisticated if they can bypass conventional security mechanisms.

This level of sophistication is achieved as a result of the combination of multiple advanced attack methods, such as the exploitation of an application vulnerability (web server or PDF file reader), followed by the spread of a malware through the corporate network, or the retrieval of access to sensitive assets by fraudulently increasing privileges.