The problem with catchphrases
By Christine Burns, NetworkWorld.com, 08/13/04
Welcome to the inaugural Network World Testing Notes. Periodically, Lab Alliance Director Christine Burns and senior editor of product testing Keith Shaw will fill this space with information about some of the bigger Clear Choice Tests we've got in the works. We'll touch on product criteria, test methodology, bumps in the testing road, etc. As always, we welcome - and in fact, encourage - your comments, critiques and complaints.
The innate problem with analyst firms coining catchy phrases for up-and-coming product classes is that vendors try to pigeon hole products into those classifications in order not to miss the marketing boat.
We ran into this issue when we set out to evaluate the ever-growing class of products that fall into the enterprise endpoint security bucket.
When you open up this bucket, you find your personal firewalls, some host IPS products, a few sandbox technologies, a couple anti-virus wares swimming around in there as well as the policy enforcement products and the software that's going to specifically help reign in your mobile users, regardless of what they are using on the network.
They all stand under the same "enterprise endpoint security" marketing umbrella, but obviously not a good mix to give readers an apples-to-apples comparison of their options.
But to get to that end, we've embarked on a series of tests to be conducted by Mandy Andress and Rodney Thayer, both members of the Network World Lab Alliance - that break up this overused category into digestible chunks. This series will place all of the enterprise end point security products available into logical groupings according to function, test how well these products thwart attacks, and evaluate the manageability features that make them well suited for an enterprise deployment.
The main criteria for the first test - the results of which will be published mid-September - is that products must actively DO something to identify and either block or stop malicious traffic or programs/services from reaching or running on the client. In our estimation, having a product that merely complains to you that a system does not have virus fingerprint set 3472 installed doesn't count as DOING something. Additionally, products included in this test must also include an administration/logging console as well as the ability to define specific security policies, remotely deploy client software, and send alerts on suspected attacks.
Even inside this sub-class of enterprise end point security products - for which we've qualified a whopping nine products for inclusion - we've had to further break down how we test them based on how each attacks the problem.
The second of the future end point security tests will focus on products that help you set and enforce policy regarding what programs the system trying to connect to the network must - or must - not have installed in order to gain access. The third test will comprise products that hone in on supplying client security for mobile devices. While testing for the first leg of this project is wrapping up now, we welcome your input on how to appropriately test the products that qualify for the second and third rounds of testing.
Complete test results.
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