Computer Associates International has introduced an
appliance designed to detect and repair hundreds of potential
vulnerabilities.
This week, at its CA World 2003 user event, the company
announced the eTrust Vulnerability Manager, which IT staff can use
to discover and correct potential soft spots in enterprise
security.
The software comes bundled on a rack-mountable Dell Computer
machine running Windows 2000 Server software and delivers a
browser-based interface on any client in the network. That way,
security administrators can use a single tool to protect servers
and desktops against intrusions and other threats.
The appliance works by discovering various servers and desktops
in the network and prioritising which of them are most important,
based on what business process they support.
The built-in inventory service will drill down into a server
operating system and discover the applications and databases and
even software patches running there. The tool then checks these
assets against an internal database that contains a catalogue of
more than 6,000 vulnerabilities and automatically creates a
remediation checklist for IT staff to review.
The vulnerability database can be updated regularly as more
security holes are discovered and validated.
The tool will also integrate with the CA eTrust Security Command
Center security management portal and its flagship Unicenter
enterprise management application.
ETrust Vulnerability Manager starts at $25,000 (£15,677) per
appliance, plus $2 per node per month, and supports Windows, Linux
and Unix.
Marc L Songini writes for Computerworld