Protego Ships First Threat Mitigation Appliance For Small-To-Medium Sized Businesses and Distributed Enterprises

MILPITAS, CA – September 3rd, 2004: – Protego Networks, Inc., the leading provider of enterprise threat mitigation appliances, today announced the industry’s first threat mitigation appliance at a total cost of ownership (TCO) attractive to small-to-medium sized businesses (SMB) and distributed enterprises. The PN MARS-20 appliance enables network administrators and security operators to identify and investigate valid incidents, streamline auditing processes, as well as prevent and stop attacks – at the press of a button. Protego exceeds where all other security information management (SIM) vendors fall short of meeting customer expectations.

“First generation SIM products have failed to live up to customer expectations,” said Imin Lee, CEO and founder of Protego. “They fall short on performance, have exorbitant up front costs and long term TCO, require heavy server and database administration, and they’re too complex and difficult to deploy for the majority of the mid-tier market. With our MARS 20, distributed enterprises, SMBs and consultants serving these markets now have a powerful, low cost and easily deployed security management solution.”

“Our credit union is committed to maintaining the confidentiality and protection of financial transactions and personal information,” said Michael Murrock, vice president of operations at ACCESS Federal Credit Union. “We regularly examine processes and available products that can fortify our ongoing security measures. Protego offers unique threat mitigation capabilities that complement our security portfolio. The MARS appliance is a turnkey solution that enables us to quickly discover and prioritize threats, pinpoint root cause and effect, and respond. It supports our compliance efforts by centrally consolidating and managing a significant volume of network and security data.”

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“Zero-day attacks, blended threats, system breaches, and audit concerns don’t play ‘favorites’ – they impact both the Fortune 1000 as well as smaller organizations without impunity,” said Peter Lindstrom, research director at security analyst firm Spire Security. “Protego has delivered a distinctive solution converging network intelligence, security management, incident visualization and mitigation response. By offering this appliance in an affordable, channel-friendly package, Protego will help a broader market to address threat mitigation and compliance issues.”

About PN MARS 20
PN MARS is a complete threat mitigation appliance utilizing patent-pending Protego technology to transform raw network and security data into actionable network intelligence critical to subvert real security incidents and maintain compliance requirements. These patents cover:

ContextCorrelationâ„? – groups multiple events and network behavior across NAT boundaries in a session. System and user-defined correlation rules are then applied to multiple sessions to identify valid incidents. This significantly reduces raw event data and facilitates response prioritization.

SureVectorâ„? analysis – processes incidents to determine if threats are valid or have been countered by assessing the end-to-end attack path components. The result eliminates false positives and resolved threats, and enables full path drill-down visualization and investigation.

AutoMitigateâ„? – identifies available choke point devices along the attack path and allows the user to automate appropriate device commands that can mitigate the threat. The result responsively and accurately prevents or contains an attack by leveraging the infrastructure.

“We examined several of the leading Security Information Management platforms and were disappointed to learn that none excelled at the correlation, consolidation, and identification of attacks,” said Mike Polce, president of M. A. Polce Consulting, a network security consultancy based in Rome, and New York. “We were also shocked by the overall cost of ownership, limited capabilities and poor performance. We recommend Protego’s appliances based on their superior performance, correlation, consolidation and visualization features, and for their ability to stop attacks. The product’s superior functionality, competitive price point, simple appliance license model, usability and ease of installation make it a safe and reliable decision for our clients.”

The MARS appliance consists of an Intel 1U rack mountable platform utilizing a web-based user interface, hardened OS, embedded Oracle® database, proprietary logic, and scalable architecture. The release offers advanced SIM features, such as:
· Event correlation and data consolidation supporting an array of popular network and security devices, applications, operating systems, and Netflow

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· Predefined rules, complex rules and support for rule customization and free-form query
· Real-time, drill-down attack path visualization and investigation with complete rule, MAC address, and raw event details
· Predefined, customizable and scheduled reports for audit, compliance and trending
· Dashboard with asset grouping and naming to facilitate management by business relevance
· Roles-based administration with intuitive workflow supporting case-centric investigations, annotations and reports
· Universal device support integrating any application syslog feed into the appliance
· Full replay and rapid investigation of both real-time and dated incidents
· Continuous archive of consolidated events to common NAS storage.

PN-MARS allows organizations to efficiently manage security information overload, counter sophisticated attacks and zero-day threat outbreaks, coordinate incident response and improve security operation costs, as well as adhere to mounting audit and compliance requirements.

Availability
Protego’s solutions are available through a network of authorized security integration channels worldwide. PN MARS 20 is shipping and attractively priced for the mid-tier market starting at $10,950. The product has passed extensive performance, reliability and integration tests with leading network and security devices. The MARS family ranges from $10,000 to $90,000 with different performance characteristics to satisfy small, medium, large and expansive enterprises. Protego’s solutions deliver correlation, visualization, investigation and mitigation capabilities without any additional servers, host agents, database administration, or integration costs.

About Protego
Protego Networks Inc. is the leading provider of enterprise threat mitigation appliances empowering companies to readily identify, manage and eliminate network attacks. Protego’s PN MARS appliance family fortifies deployed network devices and security countermeasures by combining network intelligence, ContextCorrelationâ„?, SureVectorâ„? analysis and AutoMitigateâ„? capability in a high performance appliance to subvert real security incidents. Protego’s scalable appliances provide cost-effective and easily deployed solutions to prevent, understand and even stop sophisticated threats, network outbreak, and system breaches. Protego exceeds where all other security information management (SIM) vendors fall short of meeting customer expectations. Protego’s appliances integrate and consolidate security event information from leading security products and currently protect financial services, manufacturing, managed services, health industrial and government organizations worldwide. For more information, visit www.protegonetworks.com.