Google informed network admins that it has made some improvements to the Safe Browsing Alerts for Network Administrators service.
The search giant launched Safe Browsing Alerts for Network Administrators in 2010 to provide Autonomous System (AS) owners early notifications when malicious content is found on their networks.
Google monitors roughly 40 percent of active networks, or 22,000 autonomous system numbers (ASNs), which are assigned to each network on the Internet. According to the company, its service has been actively used by 1,300 network administrators, which receive 250 reports each day.
In an effort to make Safe Browsing Alerts for Network Administrators even more useful, Google has now started informing admins about URLs related to malicious software, potentially unwanted programs (PUPs), and social engineering.
Administrators who sign up for the service are informed about compromised pages on their network that can harm users via drive-by downloads or exploits. They will also be alerted about domains that are specially set up to serve malware or exploits.
Alerts are also sent out when the Safe Browsing system detects traditional malware downloads, social engineering websites set up to trick users into downloading software or providing sensitive information, and URLs that point to unwanted software.
“Network administrators can use the data provided by our service to gain insights into the security and quality of their network. By working together, we can make it more challenging and expensive for attackers to profit from user harm,” Nav Jagpal, software engineer at Google, said.
Google has made several improvements to Safe Browsing over the past years, including the addition of alerts for PUPs, and the expansion of the service to Chrome, including the Android version, and Google Search.