ISS Set To Introduce Internet Scanner, RealSecure Upgrades

With the upgrade, all of ISS' protection agents are at version 7.0, so they run on a common protection engine. Customers can push out a single update across the network, servers and desktops via the ISS SiteProtector centralized management system to provide quicker protection from new threats, said ISS executives.

"More and more of the security strategy has to be driven into a platform view," said Chris Klaus, founder and CTO of ISS, based here. "Stand-alone products need to start cooperating together across multiple layers and functions."

ISS aims to enhance its platform further by providing a "virtual patch process" to help customers overcome the time-consuming and costly process of manually implementing security patches from Microsoft and others, he said.

To that end, ISS plans next month to introduce a Catastrophic Risk Index (CRI), which will list top vulnerabilities and mitigation measures. Data from CRI, plus a new level of intelligence, will be incorporated into an update for Internet Scanner 7.0. The update will allow the scanner to determine if a customer is vulnerable to the CRI risks and provide information on how to configure ISS agents to protect against the risks.

"We're preaching zero-day protection," Klaus said, adding that malicious code does the most damage within the first 24 hours.

Paul Grafeo, vice president of sales at Red Bull Technologies, a security solution provider based here, said his company just installed the ISS 7.0 versions for several enterprise and government clients.

"It's a very easy install," he said. The distributed scanning feature in Internet Scanner 7.0 helps conserve bandwidth in enterprise environments, he said.

But while ISS has strong technology, it still doesn't know how to work with the channel, said Pat Grillo, president and CEO of Atrion Communications Resources, a Branchburg, N.J.-based systems integrator. "They still have a direct mentality in the field," he said.

Pricing for Internet Scanner 7.0 starts at $995 per physical device scanned. Other new features include improved accuracy and a unified policy interface.