"Strategic" solutions vs. "pure play"

Vik Phatak of NSS Labs discussed the impact of running IPS within a router in this Network World article about integrated security.

Gartner lists NSS Labs certification as criteria for Magic Quadrant

In case anyone is wondering what the value of an NSS certification is, Gartner has recently recognized the value of NSS Labs certifications by adding them to the short list of criteria for products to achieve ranking in the coveted Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network IPS. NSS Labs pioneered the Network Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) standards and test methodologies as early as 2002, and these are globally recognized as the de facto gold standard for the industry. 3rd party testing such as NSS Labs group test certification is an important measure of product quality, which carries the highest weighting of all the evaluation criteria.

The fact that NSS was listed before Common Criteria was probably not accidental. The difference between the two evaluations is significant; NSS evaluates real-world security effectiveness and performance, whereas CC primarily evaluates the processes used to create a product.

Note:NSS Labs has completed a number of network IPS product evaluations this year on products from IBM, Juniper and others and are currently performing the industry's only 10 Gbps IPS group test.

We hear time and again from information security managers and CISOs that our reports are helping them make informed decisions that they couldn't make with less rigorous evaluations. Such acknowledgement makes what we do all that more rewarding. On behalf of all the staff and engineers at NSS Labs, I'd like to thank the gentlemen at Gartner for acknowledging the efforts of our product analysts.

P.S. We don't plan to stop at IPS...

Test in the "ether"

We at NSS Labs work pretty hard testing network, host and other information security products. Gruelling but rewarding work. Sometimes we get to have a little fun as well, like this recent "Air-Test."