Stories by Roger A. Grimes

Application whitelisting review: Bit9 Parity Suite

As many product vendors can readily tell you, this reviewer is the ultimate computer security cynic and a tough writer to please. I'm unsparingly critical of overhyped products. Although I've evaluated a number of excellent products over the years, I've never given a perfect 10 in any scorecard category -- until now. Bit9 Parity is one of the few computer security products that, if deployed in your Windows environment, will radically and immediately reduce your enterprise's level of security risk. It's not perfect, and it did not score a perfect 10 in every field -- but it earned the highest score this reviewer has ever given.

Written by Roger A. Grimes04 Nov. 09 22:13

Application whitelisting review: McAfee Application Control

McAfee Application Control 5.0 (due out Dec. 15) is the result of McAfee's acquisition of Solidcore and the integration of Solidcore S3 Control with McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO). McAfee Application Control rivals SignaCert for the broadest client support among all the products in InfoWorld's review. It also boasts write protection and ownership protection of whitelisted files, good reporting and alerting, and no significant cons.

Written by Roger A. Grimes04 Nov. 09 22:13

Application whitelisting review: SignaCert Enterprise Trust Services

SignaCert was one of the first whitelisting products available, and it now boasts more than 1 billion predefined file signatures as part of its Global Trust Repository service. It also offers file authenticity ratings, wide platform support, extensibility through XML, and excellent documentation. SignaCert's significant weakness is that it does not natively block file executions -- the only product in InfoWorld's review that does not include this ability as a standard feature.

Written by Roger A. Grimes04 Nov. 09 22:13

Application whitelisting review: Lumension Application Control

Lumension Application Control is a strong whitelisting solution with broad file coverage, excellent reporting, and a complete set of Windows file definitions that can be used to spot potentially troublesome changes to system files. Its one noteworthy shortcoming is the inability to create whitelisting rules based on the digital signatures of application publishers.

Written by Roger A. Grimes04 Nov. 09 22:13

How secure is Opera?

Opera has long been an underrated, feature-rich browser worthy of greater attention and a larger market share. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, mobile phones, Nintendo gaming systems, and other now historical operating systems. Like all of the leading browsers, it supports Java and JavaScript, and its impressive, growing feature set pushes beyond today's standards such as tabbed browsing to include the likes of voice-controlled browsing, e-mail, and instant messaging. Opera has many unique security features too, and the granularity of its security controls easily beats that of most rivals, the exception being Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Written by Roger A. Grimes29 Jan. 09 09:57

Ever-evolving Malware Is Getting Nastier

Malware evolves in trends. Yesterday's boot virus is today's Web server exploit program. Malware follows popularity, and it morphs to get past ubiquitous defences. Understanding the growing trends in malware will help you plan better defences

Written by Roger A. Grimes04 June 07 12:34
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