eEye EVA focuses in on network security

To say that keeping on top of your OS updates is a pain is to vastly understate the nature of the problem. If you're responsible for an enterprise with even a few dozen servers, plus a few appliances, some routers and switches, and a firewall or two, you have a huge management problem. Applying all of the necessary patches -- assuming you can figure out which patches you need and which are actually available -- can tax your staff to the breaking point. Worse, with larger enterprises, the problems mushroom.

Meanwhile, of course, you're being taken to task by everyone from the board to random magazine pundits for not having every patch installed within milliseconds of when it's announced. Then, when a worm shows up and wreaks havoc on your network, everybody's pointing fingers -- at you.

eEye Digital Security's popular Retina Network Security Scanner is quite capable of keeping an administrator apprised of vulnerabilities on a single network. But there was never a way to extend Retina's capabilities to the enterprise — until now.

eEye's EVA (Enterprise Vulnerability Assessment) ties individual Retina scanners together, allowing all of them to be managed from a single station. In fact, EVA will allow you to handle up to 65,000 individual IP addresses in your enterprise.

EVA draws its vulnerability scanning smarts from the Retina scanner. Retina Remote Manager makes it each scanner capable of communicating with the enterprise manager. Tying everything together is the REM (Remote Enterprise Management) Events Server. This product consolidates the information from the Retina scanners, manages security certificate distribution and event logging. The server is designed to communicate with the REM Events Manager.

The REM Events Manager, the fourth component of EVA, provides the EVA user interface. It also handles the reporting for the consolidated enterprise data, or from any individual scanner. Further, the Events Manager handles the process of delegating tasks to other administrators. It can reduce workload by automating the process of distributing reports to the affected organizations or locations according to predetermined scopes, rules or levels of authority. Conveniently, the Events Manager is a Web-based application, so you can reach your management console from nearly anywhere.

Finally, there's also a REM Event Client, which is a middleware bridge between the Events Manager and the Retina Remote Manager.

Assuming you already have a database server running on your network, deploying EVA is fairly simple. Everything comes on one CD, and you install the various parts in order, following the directions on the screen. The biggest inconvenience is typing in long lists of characters in groups of four to activate the license. This boring process seems to be the current way of making sure the product isn't pirated.