Network Compliance Without The Cost

by Greg McNevin

June 12th, 2006: Open-source network intrusion protection provider Sourcefire has announce what it says is the world’s first automated, real-time network compliance solution.

Sourcefire says that the solution is achieved through its Real-time Network Awareness (RNA) technology, allowing it to deliver IT security compliance with “virtually no administrative overhead”.

RNA is a passive network and endpoint discovery tool that continuously monitors the network and maintains an inventory of the composition and behaviour of every active endpoint on a network. With details including type, vendor, and version information for all running operating systems, ports, protocols, services, and network applications, RNA is also able to detect virtually any change in composition or behaviour in real-time.

Because of this real time monitoring, Sourcefire says that RNA 4.0 can convert network traffic and behaviour data into a compliance policy on the fly and enable users to define and set compliance policies for endpoints, subnets, or networks with the click of a mouse.

“RNA was invented to provide the real-time-all-of-the-time network intelligence needed to transform the efficiency of network intrusion detection and prevention,” says Martin Roesch, Sourcefire founder and the creator of Snort. “With the 'One-click Compliance' functionality of RNA 4.0, our customers will be able to realize similarly dramatic gains in efficiency as they enforce compliance with their IT security policy.”

RNA is available now as a 'plug-n-protect' appliance or blade-ready software, while RNA 4.0 will be generally available in late 2006.

Comment on this story

Related Article:

Accessing Open Source Made Easier