Secure Computing's New Sidewinder Creates Unified Incident Reports

Trent Jacobi, security consultant at Netdirect Systems, a total solution provider based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said the product is a logical complement to Secure Computing's intrusion-prevention appliances and could represent a good upsell opportunity. It can be installed on a Windows-based server.

"It's a great thing because in the past we had to rely on third-party products," Jacobi said. "The costs of those have been higher."

Sidewinder G2 Security Reporter's key features include the ability to produce aggregated log and audit information for multiple Sidewinder G2 appliances, which provide SSL VPN, antivirus and antispam capabilities, said Andrew Stevens, senior product manager at Secure Computing, Seattle.

In this way, someone can organize a unified view of threats that might have been previously presented in 30 different reports, Stevens said. This makes it simpler for security analysts to assess incidents logged by a particular device and could help with regulatory auditing processes, he said. Or someone could correlate data from multiple devices, providing deeper information about a distributed threat, he said.

The tool also offers realtime alerts and provides a graphical portal through which administrators can manage reports. "This can be customized depending on the person accessing the report information," Stevens said.

The software is priced from $695 to $1,295 per appliance, depending on configuration and quantity.