RSA: Big guns tighten security

Stalwarts and startups alike will trot out new wares at the RSA Conference this week in San Francisco. Several products will focus on fighting viruses, making mobile devices more secure, and vulnerability scanning.

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Hewlett-Packard, Symantec, Internet Security Systems, Nokia, and newcomer Skybox Security are among vendors that will be on hand at the show.

HP will introduce two new services, Virus Throttler and Active Counter Measures. Virus Throttler was created by researching the human body and its defense responses to devise automated software that can respond to future and unknown threats, said Joe Pato, a technologist at HP Labs.

Active Counter Measures is a distributed scanning tool that discovers vulnerable machines on a network. Pato said the technology works its way through the network to find vulnerable computers using a benign payload.

Startup Skybox Security will introduce Skybox View, a software suite designed to minimize security risks. Gidi Cohen, vice president of marketing at Skybox, said that its software collects, models, and analyzes data captured by various vulnerability scanners. Once analyzed, Skybox lets administrators identify threats and address them with existing patch-management programs.

ISS will launch anti-spam and content management software that it obtained with the purchase of German company Cobion, in January. Cobion’s products include a Web filtering tool, spam filters, and a filter that monitors intranet traffic.

Meanwhile, Zone Labs will detail a new version of its Integrity security policy enforcement product called Integrity 5.0. The new product features tighter integration with Check Point Software Technologies’ firewalls and VPN products so that companies can limit network access to machines complying with security policies regarding anti-virus updates, system configuration, and patch level, Zone Labs said.

Citing the growing use of mobile devices such as smart phones to access corporate network resources, Symantec is partnering with mobile phone giant Nokia to protect phones from hackers, spam, and viruses.

A new software client for the Nokia 9500 Communicator will include anti-virus features, an integrated firewall, and the ability to download software updates from Symantec’s LiveUpdate servers using a wireless connection, said Laura Garcia-Manrique, group product manager at Symantec. “We’re getting a very strong message from IT that we need to secure mobile devices,” Garcia-Manrique said.