Privacyware going corporate

Privacyware next month is scheduled to unveil a management platform for its personal firewall that will make the desktop- and laptop-based software suitable for deployment in corporate networks.

Called Endpoint Security Console, the platform lets administrators control Privatefirewall, a desktop security application that blocks suspicious behavior in individual machines that may be the sign of infection by viruses, worms or other malware.

With the console, businesses will be able to set policies about what processes and applications are allowed to run on their PCs and white-list them. They can black-list others or have alerts sent about them.

The upside of this type of protection is that it doesn't rely on virus signatures, which can be ineffective if the signature for a new virus has not been added to the virus-signature library. Instead, Privatefirewall is installed in learning mode for a number of days and determines a behavior baseline that becomes the norm for activity on each machine. Deviations from the norm trigger alerts to the user and the console. An administrator then has to allow or disallow the flagged behavior, and that becomes the software's default response to that behavior whenever it comes up again.

The downside is that the software relies on an administrator to make a judgment about whether to allow a flagged behavior, though if the administrator has stepped away from the console, the software can be set to allow or disallow flagged processes.

Privacyware says administrators can set a default for a process that is sometimes allowable and sometimes not that depends on how often it is legitimate behavior. So, if a behavior is legitimate 95% of the time, an administrator might set the default to approve that behavior if there is no administrator response to an alert within 10 seconds. Monitoring a PC with Privatefirewall eats up about 15MB of RAM when it is fully engaged, the company says.

Until next month's expected release of Endpoint Security Console, Privatefirewall will be a desktop application that only the user can control. Privatefirewall has been around since 1999, when it was a standard stateful-inspection firewall with some proprietary features, but its functionality has expanded since then. The product competes with McAfee's Host Intrusion Prevention and Sana Security's Primary Response.

With the release of Privatefirewall 5.0 last week, Privacyware announced a sales agreement with CA that integrates CA's antivirus and antispyware software into Privatefirewall for an extra fee.

Privatefirewall costs $30 per seat, with discounts for the purchase of sufficient quantities. Adding CA's antivirus and antispyware software costs an additional $10 per seat. Endpoint Security Console comes at no extra cost when customers buy multiple licenses for Privatefirewall.