RE: Less well-known commercial IDS

["Andrew Plato" <andrew.plato () anitian com>]

> I see a lot of discussion on this list to be about larger, 
> more established IDS/IPS solutions.  I'm just wondering if 
> anyone has experience with smaller commercial IDS devices 
> like the Symantec 7100 series?  If so, what did you think?  
> What were you comparing it to?

I think there are a lot of lower-cost IPSs. Some are good, some are
fair, many are lame. Symantec isn't one that comes to mind. It actually
is pretty expensive. My personal favorite is Fortinet. It's a UTM
(all-in-one) box. We sell A LOT of Fortinet and as a whole, customers
have been very pleased with its performance. And its IPS is based on
Snort, incidentally. Fortinet has the plus of having firewall,
anti-virus, VPN, and lots of other goodies as well. 

I have heard good things about SecureWorks. However, they are a purely
managed IPS. I have one customer with Astaro, who says good things about
their product. 

> Many of my clients are too small to afford the more expensive IDS
offerings.
> And, the perception can be (correct or not is irrelevant) that SNORT
simply 
> shifts the up-front costs to the management phase.  I guess, if you
feel 
> this is incorrect, I'd be interested in your thoughts on this, too.

Snort is resource intensive. It's a good IDS/IPS that requires a lot of
expertise and management to make it work effectively. Most small to
medium businesses lack such resources, as you have discovered. As such,
lower cost commercial IPSs like SecureWorks or Fortinet (both
Snort-based IPSes), give those customers the value of Snort as a
technology without requiring a lot of personnel resources. 

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Andrew Plato, CISSP
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ANITIAN ENTERPRISE SECURITY

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