Vendor Briefings

Solidifying Security
As companies implement new and more complex policies and products to mitigate the increasing proliferation of security threats, the burden of maintaining these security solutions typically falls on understaffed and overworked IT departments. In a briefing with Solidcore Systems (http://www.solidcore.com), I learned about a new security solution that attempts to lessen the load on beleaguered IT departments. By ensuring that only authorized code can run on a system, Solidcore's new S3 Security solution takes a proactive approach to endpoint security and reduces much of the maintenance, patching, and recovery activities that IT departments continually face. Based on Solidcore's Solidification technology, S3 Security software controls what code can run on solidified systems, rendering these systems virtually unexploitable through security vulnerabilities in both application and OS code. The software integrates seamlessly with existing applications, including update and monitoring tools, backup and restore utilities, and antivirus and other security software. Because S3 Security is easy to install and requires no initial or ongoing policy configuration, it can reduce the cost, complexity, and time involved in maintaining a secure business environment.
—Gayle Rodcay

Sana Primary Response Moves to Standalone Clients
Sana Security (http://www.sanasecurity.com) has added two new members to its Primary Response family of products that guard against malware such as viruses, spyware, adware, and rootkits: SafeConnect and SafeConnect On-Demand. Sana Senior VP of Sales and Marketing Timothy Eades described SafeConnect as a standalone client for an enterprise's remote users or for users in a small business that doesn't want a centrally managed solution. SafeConnect On-Demand lets a user download an ActiveX "dissolvable" client from the Web to detect and clean malware from his or her computer. Sana CTO Vlad Gorelik explained Primary Response's Active Malware Defense Technology (ActiveMDT) 2.0, which examines and evaluates the behaviors of programs and components on the protected system and quarantines or removes (depending on user configuration) misbehaving software. Sana favors a behavioral rather than a signature approach because it allows the Primary Response products to detect new attacks without waiting for the product updates that signature-based products require. SafeConnect is priced at $24.95 and will begin shipping in early 2006.
—Renee Munshi

GFI Beefs Up Server Checks and Alerting in Network Monitor Server 7.0
GFI (http://www.gfi.com) CEO Curtis Staker and Marketing Manager Stephen Chetcuti Bonavita briefed us about GFI Network Server Monitor 7.0, which adds several enhancements to this software tool that keeps an eye on your servers for you. Staker and Chetcuti Bonavita explained that the new version adds more monitoring checks for various servers and automates more of a network administrator's monitoring tasks so that server problems surface earlier. GFI Network Server Monitor alerts administrators to problems with Short Message Service (SMS) and email messages. Version 7 upgrades alerting with the ability to send SMS messages to a Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) phone or SMS gateway and email messages through the Clickatell Web email facility or other third-party email services. Version 7 also lets you store monitoring data in a Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Access database and centralize the results from multiple monitoring installations.
—Renee Munshi

Don't Fix It, Freeze It
Imagine an environment in which administrators can instantly undo the changes that malicious hackers, viruses, reckless employees, or innocent clickers can do to a machine, saving countless hours of technical support and reducing computer and employee downtime. Faronics (http://www.faronics.com) has made such an environment possible with the release of Deep Freeze 5.6. Deep Freeze erases all changes to a machine's configurations, profiles, and other settings on restart and resets the computer to the standard desktop configuration. IT pros no longer need to rebuild, reimage, or troubleshoot users' desktops. The software is invisible to the user, and all system resources and programs behave as usual. Administrators can "thaw" machines to perform system updates or install new programs, and the software is fully compatible with Windows Updates. Deep Freeze comes in Standard, Professional, or Enterprise editions to protect from several to several thousand machines over a LAN, a WAN, or the Internet.
—Gayle Rodcay