Third Brigade Improves Vulnerability Assessment Scores

WebKnowHow
Tuesday, February 6, 2007; 03:42 AM

Third Brigade (www.thirdbrigade.com) today unveiled Deep Security 5, an advanced, host intrusion prevention system that detects and prevents known and zero-day attacks targeting mission critical servers.

“We’ve seen our vulnerability assessment and risk scores continually improve since deploying Third Brigade Deep security,” said Bo Mendenhall, Manager of Information Security, of University of Utah Health Sciences Center. “And the innovation and responsiveness demonstrated by Third Brigade with this new release has been impressive.”

Third Brigade Deep Security (www.thirdbrigade.com/product.aspx?id=48) brings proven network security approaches, including firewall and intrusion detection and prevention, down to individual computers and devices. It shields vulnerabilities in Windows, Linux and Unix operating systems, as well as enterprise and web applications that make up a data center.

“Enterprise servers are increasingly being targeted by cyber-criminals,” said Brian O’Higgins, CTO of Third Brigade. “Security breaches can result in unplanned downtime, performance reductions, and can jeopardize service-level agreements. In addition, while organizations routinely conduct vulnerability assessments, penetration tests and security audits on their data center systems, they’ve lacked cost-effective controls for quickly shielding vulnerabilities that are discovered.”

According to Neil MacDonald VP, Distinguished Analyst Information Security, Privacy and Risk, Gartner Inc, “Compared with desktops, servers are easier to secure and tend to host more valuable business assets. There are fewer of them, and they are more static in nature and shouldn’t have users or administrators downloading and executing unknown code.” (Gartner, “Best Practices for Implementing Host-Based Intrusion Prevention Systems”, November 20, 2006)

Key Features

Product enhancements in the newest release have been heavily influenced by customers that rely on Third Brigade Deep Security to provide broader, faster and simpler protection for their enterprise servers, and include:

• Recommendation scan – Identifies applications running on hosts and recommends which intrusion prevention filters should be applied to them, ensuring the correct protection is in place with minimal effort.
• Role-based access – Allows multiple administrators, each with different levels of permission, to operate different aspects of the system and receive information appropriate to them.
• Enriched reporting – A wide selection of detailed reports document attempted attacks, and includes a forensic report that provides an auditable history of security configurations and changes.
• Risk ranking – Security events can be viewed based on asset value as well as vulnerability information.
• Optimized filtering – Advanced capabilities for dealing with streaming media such as IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) to help maximize performance.
• Application protection – Includes out-of-the-box vulnerability protection for over 100 applications, including web and email servers, databases, and DNS and DHCP servers.

Platform protection

Third Brigade continues to protect the broadest range set of platforms, including:

Microsoft® Windows® 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista™: “Taking a defense-in-depth approach to security by adding technologies such as host-based IDS/IPS is both prudent, and now practical,” said Bruce Cowper, Senior Program Manager, Security Mobilization Initiative at Microsoft Canada Co.

SUSE Linux Enterprise 9 and 10 from Novell: “SUSE Linux Enterprise is a strategic platform for heterogeneous data centers, and Third Brigade’s support for mixed environments helps enterprises that need to better protect their mission-critical servers,” said Justin Steinman, director of marketing for Linux and Open Platform Solutions at Novell.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4: “It’s vital for enterprises that security vendors keep pace with the latest platform releases. Third Brigade has been exemplary in protecting the latest versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux,” said Bob Lord, Senior Director of Security Engineering at Red Hat.

Solaris™ 8, 9 and 10 on SPARC: Solaris is central to most data centers. Third Brigade supports Solaris 10 on x86, the newest, and most powerful release yet.

VMware® - VMware Server (host & guest OS) and VMware ESX Server (guest OS).

Availability

Third Brigade Deep Security 5 is available in April. The product may be purchased directly from the company or through authorized resellers. For more information, please visit www.thirdbrigade.com or call 866-373-6977.

About Third Brigade

Third Brigade specializes in providing host intrusion defense systems to organizations that need to detect and prevent attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in mission critical systems. Third Brigade Deep Security allows businesses to apply comprehensive security profiles to hosts that protect against known and zero-day attacks using deep packet inspection. It helps ensure compliance and the 24-7 availability of critical systems, provides a virtual patch for software vulnerabilities, and allows organizations to deliver Internet-based services with greater security and confidence. Unlike other host intrusion detection and prevention systems, Third Brigade Deep Security provides broader, faster and simpler protection. Third Brigade. That’s control.