eEye Digital Security introduces Blink Professional - the industry's most powerful endpoint security software

SecureData, a member of the JSE-listed ERP.com Group and the southern African enterprise partner for eEye Digital Security, today announced the latter's latest version of Blink Professional, its award-winning endpoint security technology.

Blink Professional sets a new bar in comprehensive endpoint security for the enterprise, as it is the first to incorporate application whitelisting, removable storage management and dynamic policy support.

This added functionality further moves Blink Professional from the host-based intrusion prevention system (HIPS) market segment into a completely new category known as unified client security, in which multiple security functions are consolidated onto a single, centrally managed agent.

"The industry needs to expand its definition of what 'endpoint security' means. Right now, it is a mish-mash of point products that often only offer reactive protection," commented Marc Maiffret, eEye's founder and CTO.

"More than just consolidated security functionality, a good endpoint product will deliver proactive protection from unknown and known threats and offer complete management and control over the systems for which IT is responsible. That's what's necessary to truly secure an endpoint device and what we believe we've achieved with Blink Professional."

Deployed as a software agent on a Windows-based server, desktop PC or laptop, Blink Professional leverages multiple layers of protection - more so than any other endpoint security product - to shield individual digital assets from attacks and keep systems up and running. Blink Professional not only delivers the industry's most comprehensive endpoint security for the attacks that are affecting users today, it unifies this functionality in order to reduce the memory and computing resources necessary to support the agent. Blink Professional also serves as a platform to which future security functionality can be added, effectively making it the last security agent that IT has to install and manage.

Just as importantly, Blink can be deployed and managed from a central location, making it ideal for distributed network environments.

In addition to its existing, award-winning functionality, Blink Professional combines the following new technologies into an integrated solution:

* Dynamic policy control - This unique capability enables IT to have different policies set up based on the user environment. As users come and go in and out of the network perimeter, their Blink policies can vary with their location. Blink gives IT the ability to block certain behaviours and applications (such as removable hard drives, iTunes, etc) that may pose a threat while on the network, but still allow users to access while on the road, whether that be a hotel, a coffee shop, home, etc. No other unified client security product has this capability.
* Policy-based hardware access - Blink can detect, allow or deny access to USB storage devices that map drives to systems. Examples of the devices include iPods, USB keys, USB external hard drives, etc. Blink allows IT to block or allow all of these devices. By preventing the use of USB storage devices organisations can stop users from downloading important company information, installing unapproved applications or applications that may have malicious software.
* Execution control - Blink can be configured to allow or deny the execution of processes and control which applications are used on each system. For example, users may receive e-mails that contain video or sound files from their friends and colleagues, which may contain harmful malicious programs. If these are installed and launched, a user's system is now compromised. However, if IT adds rules to the execution control feature to limit which processes are authorised to launch, then unauthorised applications are prevented from executing.

"Enterprises are rapidly realising that supporting multiple security agents, many of which have sub-par security performance, is a costly proposition in terms of money, personnel resources and system performance," added Ross Brown, eEye's CEO. "Blink, as the industry's first unified client security product, changes the game completely by incorporating all of the technology an enterprise needs at an attractive price, but also serving as a platform in which new features can be added later. All of this is done on a single, centrally managed agent, which is precisely what IT departments want."

Blink Professional also still integrates the functionality that makes it the first unified client security product. These include:

* Protocol-based IPS - Blink's unique approach to IPS stops both known and unknown attacks from ever reaching the operating system by focusing on the methods of exploitation that such attacks utilise. This enables Blink to stop intrusions without having to identify the unique signature of the attack itself, while stopping the attack before it infects the system. Unlike behaviour-based endpoint security solutions, Blink does not need to "learn" proper behaviour, but stops all attacks "right out of the box".
* Application protection - prevents buffer overflow attacks from passing control of a system to an external agent or crashing a system in a denial of service attack.
* System firewall - protects inbound and outbound port access.
* Application firewall - determines which protocols can talk to specific applications.
* Anti-malware/anti-spyware protection and removal - Blink provides real-time malicious code protection that actively blocks malware, spyware and keystroke/password loggers from being loaded into memory. It also provides the option to quarantine or remove the suspect code. As a secondary layer of defence, Blink will also perform intelligent disk scanning to identify and remove malware from the system.
* Anti-phishing protection - warns of fraudulent links and URLs.
* Retina Local Agent for VA - for periodic assessment of all local system vulnerabilities and how to remediate them.
* Policy integration and compliance - integration with the award-winning REM Security Management Console for agent deployment, gathering and evaluating enterprise-wide attack data and managing the distribution and enforcement of security policies.

eEye's integrated family of vulnerability management solutions helps IT and security professionals confidently safeguard their valuable digital assets. Working in conjunction with popular tools such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems, eEye's product portfolio also includes Retina Network Security Scanner, REM Security Management Console, Iris Network Traffic Analyzer and SecureIIS Web Server Protection.

For further information, please contact Willem Barnard at telephone (011) 790 2500; fax (011) 790 2599; e-mail willemb@securedata.co.za.