In brief: Fortinet adds intrusion prevention

Plus: CA will ship new security and policy-enforcement software.

Fortinet is adding intrusion-prevention software to its multi-function security platform, letting customers block a range of threats or suspected attacks.

Version 2.5 of its FortiOS software for FortiGate appliances also upgrades its virus scanning intrusion detection, firewall and VPN capabilities. The package is configured to block more than 30 known attacks such as denial of service and distributed DoS, SYN floods and other protocol floods, buffer overflows, ping of death and port scanning.

The software uses many means to block attacks, including dropping suspicious packets, resetting connections and blocking source addresses. The company also has added the ability to scan FTP files for viruses. Before, its anti-virus software could scan only POP3, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, Internet Message Access Protocol and HTTP traffic.

It can scan e-mails and filters based on different parameters such as sender, black lists and white lists and words and phrases in the body of the message. It also now can scan LZH compressed traffic and HTTP traffic that enters via firewall ports other than Port 80. Customers can set aside up to 15% of the memory on FortiGate gear to quarantine suspicious files until they can be examined. FortiOS 2.5 is available this month on new equipment and is available free as part of service contracts for existing customers.

Computer Associates this fall plans to ship security and policy-enforcement software to fight viruses and spam, filter Web content in accordance with corporate use policies, and block peer-to-peer file sharing. CA’s eTrust Secure Content Management marks the first time CA has sought to integrate security for the Web, e-mail and file transfers into one software package.

The software will run on Windows platforms and will include CA’s desktop anti-virus product. ETrust Secure Content Management will cost $55 per seat, but that is cut in half for users of CA’s anti-virus products who want to upgrade.