No cigar

Given the problems we encountered with availability, accuracy and ease of use, we are not naming winners in this test. On balance, we felt that all products were roughly comparable. We hope to see much improvement, especially in the area of ease of configuration and management, by our next review.

That said, there were a couple of honorable mentions. The IP530/RealSecure entry from Nokia/ISS had trouble staying up but when it did work, it offered the best combination of detailed reporting and assistance to new users. Lancope's StealthWatch also deserves special mention for being the only product that didn't crash once during our review. However, StealthWatch needs a lot more muscle in its intrusion-detection system reporting.

- David Newman, Joel Snyder and Rodney Thayer