TippingPoint Goes Phishing

TippingPoint on Monday unveiled the new antiphishing capability aimed at protecting against identity theft. TippingPoint claims to be the only comprehensive network-based IPS vendor offering the phishing protection.

TippingPoint partners said the update, available immediately, provides a defense against a growing problem and arms them with more ammunition to sell the TippingPoint IPS into businesses of all sizes.

"Phishing is a real problem and it is growing exponentially," said Lee Rudd, vice president of operations for Vigilar, an Atlanta provider of Information security solutions. "We are seeing it come up more and more in conversations with customers. This gives us another option in our solutions bucket."

Rudd said the antiphishing functionality allows TippingPoint to capitalize on the growing demand for end to end security in a single IPS. "This make the TippingPoint product more bulletproof," he said.

TippingPoint said the antiphishing filters will be delivered as a free upgrade through TippingPoint's weekly Digital Vaccine services. The first anti-phishing filters were available four weeks ago, said Tod Beardsley, lead counter-fraud engineer for TippingPoint.

The new functionality was beta tested before being released by 10 end users, but was not tested by any of TippingPoint's 131 VARs (26 of whom are also 3Com partners).

Magnus Boll, account manager for Access 2 Networks, a Toronto solution provider, said the antiphishing upgrade allows TippingPoint to maintain its market leadership position. "I don't think they should charge for the new functionality," he said. "This gives us a another tool in our toolkit. It should make the product more attractive to customers."

"This is the icing on the cake," Boll said. "The big differentiator for TippingPoint is they inspect every bit of every byte of every packet that goes through the box at wire speed."

Boll said he expects his TippingPoint sales to be up significantly this year and applauded what he called the company's well-rounded product line moving from small businesses to the enterprise.