Windows security software house Sunbelt Software has souped up its vulnerability scanning engine so that it can run network scans up to ten times faster than before.
The upgraded Sunbelt Network Security Inspector (SNSI) checks for threats against a database of over 4,000 ranked vulnerabilities and scans for patches and configuration issues against the latest Mitre Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) list of computer incidents.
It is most commonly deployed to check Windows systems, but will also handle Mac, Unix and Linux platforms.
The company said that whereas previous versions of its software called for an administrator to kick off a scan, version 2.0 can schedule a scan, allowing vulnerability checks to be made during low traffic times, as well as automatically set to reoccur on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
The tool has also had a face-lift and its interface has been redesigned using the newer tabbed Multiple Document Interface (MDI) to let an administrator set up displays of policies, groups and reports in individual tabbed documents.
SNSI is priced per administrator based on the size of organisation, rather than by the number of IP addresses. It costs $795 for organisations under 100 employees, $1495 for organisations with 100 to 500 employees, and $3495 for organisations with over 500 employees.
Sunbelt has confirmed that it has also reworked the core anti-virus detection engine that drives its Vipre enterprise system. That new engine has some important enhancements for the detection of both existing malware and new, unknown threat/variants, CEO Alex Eckelberry has noted in his blog.
He said the GenScan technology, which does pattern analysis on files, has been dramatically improved, as have the overall detection methods used by the engine. He also flagged the arrival of MX-Virtualisation technology.
Vipre uses a number of different techniques to detect the presence of malware, including classic signature detection and heuristics. The new MX-V approach will add to this arsenal a compact virtualised Windows environment to test for the presence of malware, the company is claiming.
