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Awareness Technologies – Complete Internal Threat Protection

Editor — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:23:06 +0000

Awareness Technologies claims to offer complete internal threat protection. There is a relatively new and interesting whitepaper that discusses the severity of insider threats. When put into that context, it would seem that nearly every security breach relates to insiders in some way and if that is true, it would seem that using software like what Awareness Technologies offers is not only critical, but likely the next major movement in information security management.

From what I have seen, Awareness Technologies offers a very unique product. It is an agent that sits on the end-point, but has multiple technologies built into it. The technologies include a remote monitoring feature that allows the company to watch everything that is happening on the remote computers screen. They are literally recording snapshots/screenshots every few seconds and you can play it back like a video recording. They have a data loss prevention component. They have a web filtering component. And they also have a component that allows you to remotely wipe data from a computer or physically locate it if it is lost or stolen.

The combination of these features offers some pretty interesting risk mitigation from the threat of insiders. And all from within a single agent. But what I thought was really cool was that they don’t require any hardware to try, deploy or use their system. It isn’t a client/server app like most out there are. They have built it in a cloud/SaaS model so you access a web portal to view all the required information. What this platform also enables is a way to monitor and control devices that aren’t on the corporate network. This includes travelers, telecommuters, and anyone else, anywhere else.

These guys at ATI have really thought through the real world IT administrators problems and addressed them in a very elegant way. I am very impressed with this product so far. I am going to dig into each separate technology separately (in future posts) to compare how each one stacks up with competitors and market needs, but from the 10,000 foot view, ATI gets 5 stars from us.

Quaresso – Web Security Solution

Editor — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:38:35 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to review the web application security offering by Quaresso (www.quaresso.com). There is a flash presentation as well as a PDF that explains how the service works quite well.

Essentially the software controls the end user browser better forcing better security as well as removing any sensitive information such as cookies once the session has ended. Not making the end user manually load any software is a huge bonus. It does look like they only support Windows based operating systems today which is likely a problem because many secure websites are built on non-Microsoft OS’s. They support the three latest MS browsers which takes care of most of the MS side, but not having Firefox at a minimum, and some others as well will likely cause some issues for them as well.

Sophos

Editor — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:48:22 +0000

For years I have been waiting for a “all-in-one” desktop security suite that includes things like anti-virus, anti-malware, intrusion detection and prevention, firewall, disk encryption, mobile device protection, and application protection. Well I think I may have found it with Sophos. I spoke to Richard Jacobs their CTO the other day and got briefed on their end point security product. Additional information can be found at

http://www.sophos.com/sophos/docs/eng/factshts/sophos-endpoint-security-and-data-protection-dsna.pdf

Continuity Engine releases “Community”

Editor — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:02:48 +0000

Continuity Engine, a company started in 2008 by former Founder of Perimeter eSecurity Andy Greenawalt, has just release their flagship product “Community”, a social networking concept with a compliance a business focus for financial institutions.

Community enables financial institutions to work together to create and manage complex documents that are required by federal and state regulations including business continuity plans, risk management and assessments, policies, procedures, and more.

While the idea is great, time wil tell if this project will grow wings. It will come down to organizations willingness to participate. Some organizations may not be willing to share their documents for security reasons and aren’t willing to invest their time and talents not knowing what the return will be. But if the site does take off, all users will be better off for it.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/30085855/

www.continuity.net

http://security.perimeterusa.com/Blog/bid/11556/Community-now-available-for-FI-collaboration

Fidelis

Editor — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:50:05 +0000

Fidelis is a very advanced extrusion management platform. It encompases several devices that can be either inline or out of band at several places in your network. It is primarily designed for large enterprise and Fortune 2000 companies. Their pricing model is per device rather than per seat. They probably have the best performance and traffic throughput of almost any similar system out there. While they don’t have a end-point solution, their appliances offer a very good network based extrusion management platform. It is quite flexible in its rules and logic capabilities offering customers a high degree of protection. While not profitable yet, their 22 million dollar investment last year should get them through these tough times if they continue to make good decisions and spend wisely. Their partnership with IBM (ISS) has great potential for success.