Category: Product

Microsoft is on target to release a public beta of antispyware software by Jan. 16, one month after the company acquired the software by purchasing Giant Company Software Inc., a company spokeswoman said.

Simultaneously, Microsoft is delaying elements of Exchange Edge Services, a package of e-mail security technologies, until the next major release of Exchange Server, according to a statement sent to reporters in December.

Microsoft plans to release a free evaluation version of Giant AntiSpyware software within a month of its Dec. 16 purchase of Giant, but a spokeswoman declined to comment on an exact release date, or the functionality that will be in the release program. Microsoft would not comment on information published on Microsoft enthusiast Web site Neowin.net that a beta version of the software, code named “Atlanta,” has already been distributed to internal testers. Neowin.net also posted screenshots supposedly taken from a product called “Microsoft AntiSpyware.”

Microsoft commonly tests products internally first, a process it calls “dogfooding,” but the company spokesman would not say whether the AntiSpyware software had been distributed to employees.

At the time of the Giant purchase, Microsoft said that the beta would run on Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems and that it would use that public beta release to collect and evaluate customer feedback on the product, and make decisions about how it wants to distribute the AntiSpyware product in the future.

The future is more cloudy for Exchange Edge Services, an add-on for Exchange Server announced by Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates in February 2004 at the RSA Security (Profile, Products, Articles) Conference in San Francisco.

The company last month axed Edge Services, saying it will not be released this year as an addition to Exchange, but will instead be rolled into the next version of the Exchange Server product.

With many customers still in the process of upgrading their Exchange e-mail servers to Exchange Server 2003, released in 2003, the change in timing for Edge Services will have little impact on customers, according to Microsoft. “The new (Exchange) road map means there will be no major upgrades for customers who bought upgrade rights on Exchange in late 2001 and early 2002,” Rob Helm, director of research at Directions on Microsoft Inc., wrote in a research note.

Microsoft plans to release some elements of Edge Services with Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2, due in the second half of 2005. However, it needs more time to build a product that meets customer requests for broader capabilities such as support for messaging policies to help meet regulatory compliance requirements, the company said.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/01/05/HNmicrosoftrushesantispyware_1.html

Analysts say the move is in step with an industry trend where systems vendors acquire smaller management software vendor With these new components, companies like EMC (Quote, Chart), IBM (Quote, Chart), HP (Quote, Chart) and others hope to provide more insight into clients’ computing systems.

So what exactly is EMC getting from network management software maker Smarts?

Passmore said that while management systems from EMC and other vendors work well, the packages tend to ask the administrator to know too much. Passmore said that after anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes of troubleshooting, a really smart administrator will have figured out that one of those things reported was what actually happened and the rest were symptoms of that actual problem. What’s missing in those existing management packages is the ability to filter and correlate all these events and get down to the root cause.

Passmore said EMC’s No. 1 objective is to take this technology and move it into the storage networking space to simplify the administration and management of storage networks.

http://www.internetnews.com/storage/article.php/3450991

The deal is expected to close by Jan. 29, the end of Cisco’s fiscal 2005 second quarter.

Cisco has focused on adding security capabilities to its product line for more than a year now. Last year, the company unveiled its Network Admission Control (NAC) program, a security architecture that combines virus scanning with network policing to keep attacks from entering the network in the first place.

From the beginning, Cisco has relied on acquisitions to assemble the pieces necessary to make the architecture a reality. In fact, the critical “trust agent” software in the NAC architecture that sits on users’ PCs and communicates with the Cisco policy server came from its acquisition in 2003 of Okena. Cisco is still pulling together the necessary pieces.

In October, the company bought Perfigo, a start-up that develops network access control products.

In March, it announced it was buying Twingo, which makes technology for Secure Sockets Layer virtual private networks. The technology is being incorporated into Cisco’s WebVPN product.

Cisco says it’s confident that Protego’s technology will fit nicely into its portfolio. “The acquisition of Protego further emphasizes Cisco’s commitment to network security, and (Protego’s) leadership in security monitoring, threat management and mitigation complements our ongoing work in security,” Richard Palmer, vice president in Cisco’s Security Technology Group, said in a statement.

One of the biggest problems network managers face is making sense of all the security warnings and alerts they get when an attack is detected. Protego has developed software that aggregates these alerts and security threat notices. But the company’s PN-MARS product takes security event management a step further. The software is designed to be aware of network topology. As a result, it can trace attacks through the network and send out new security rules on the fly to firewalls, Ethernet switches or IP routers to kill the attack.

Several other companies also sell products that aggregate security warnings and alerts. Some of these products, from companies such as NetForensics, ArcSight and Network Intelligence, also support remediation capabilities.

It’s easy to see how Protego’s technology complements Cisco’s existing product portfolio. In fact, the two companies have already been working together. Protego is currently a member of Cisco’s AVVID partner program, and the companies have been working together to sell security products to customers.

There are other ties among the two companies. Partha Bhattacharya, CTO of Protego, was architect and technical lead for several of Cisco’s security products, including Cisco’s firewalls, IP routers, virtual private network gear and intrusion detection devices.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5498272.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnet

Under the agreement, the Tokyo-based anti-virus and security software company will provide Hotmail’s 187 million users with protection whenever they send and receive e-mail attachments. The software will scan in real-time for the latest viruses, Trojans and worms, according to Punit Minocha, senior director of business development at Trend Micro.

The move by Redmond was seen in some corners as a blow to Santa Clara-based security firm McAfee (Quote, Chart), a Trend Micro competitor, who had provided the bulk of virus security to Hotmail users since 2000.

The move has had nearly polar effects on both software security vendors’ stock prices.

http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3450321

SAP, one of the world’s foremost business software makers, has dubbed the package “SAP Security Optimization” (SSO).

As a platform, it searches for vulnerabilities in the system, other SAP applications, third party applications, middleware, interfaces as well as externally facing gateways to determine if there is an issue that needs fixed.

While the initial evaluation can take upwards of a couple of days, customers do receive a very comprehensive evaluation of security issues and vulnerabilities which are prioritized according to severity and probability — as well as a detailed plan of attack on how to deal with the issues.

http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=480

Microsoft said it plans to offer tools based on Giant’s technology that will help protect Windows PCs from spyware and other deceptive software. The technology complements security features available in Windows XP Service Pack 2, the company said.

A beta version of a tool based on Giant’s anti-spyware product will be available to Windows customers within one month, according to a statement from Microsoft. This beta version of the software will scan a user’s PC to locate spyware and enable customers to remove it, the company said. The tool will also be configurable, so users can block known spyware and other specific unwanted software from being installed on a computer.

The company didn’t disclose financial details of the acquisition, nor did it provide a timeline for the introduction of new products based on the technology, apart from the one-month estimate on the release of the beta.

Over the past couple of years, Microsoft’s Internet browser has been hit hard by security threats. Malicious code writers have targeted security holes in Internet Explorer to launch attacks and install spyware. These attacks are often launched when a victim clicks on a specific Web link, opening the door for criminals to take over the person’s computer. Once the PC is compromised, the attacker often can access information stored on the computer, load other software on the machine and delete files.

“Spyware is a serious and growing problem for PC users, and customers have made it clear that they want Microsoft to deliver effective solutions to protect against the threat,” Mike Nash, vice-president of Microsoft’s Security Business and Technology unit, said in a statement. “Through this acquisition we’re excited to be able to provide near-term relief to Windows customers by offering new technology to help keep spyware and other deceptive software off their PCs.”

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39181459,00.htm