"High-quality product." "Finds every hole in the network." These are a couple of the reasons why readers gave eEye Digital Security's Retina Network Security Scanner the Best Security Scanner award. It didn't win by much, though. Last year's winning product, Symantec Enterprise Security Manager, missed first place this year by just one vote.

Retina can scan every machine on your network--including machines running a variety of OSs (e.g., Windows, UNIX, Linux), network devices (e.g., firewalls, routers), databases, and third-party or custom applications--for vulnerabilities. After scanning, Retina delivers a comprehensive report that details vulnerabilities and recommends corrective actions and fixes. At the beginning of each Retina session, the software automatically downloads an up-to-date vulnerabilities database and scanning technology from eEye. In addition to scanning against eEye's database of known vulnerabilities, users can write their own audits to verify such items as antivirus deployments, approved machine configurations, and application version control.