2007-05-14 14:10:03
Goodbye Symantec, Hello eEye
I was listening to the Security Now! (RSS) podcast, produced by TWiT, and heard some stuff I really liked. The latest podcast, Episode 91, featured Marc Maiffret from eEye Digital Security. The podcast focused on host security through eEye's products. Being a network admin for the past 7 years, I've heard of and used eEye's flagship product, Retina. It's a good product and does what it's supposed to do; scan systems, tell you what's vulnerable, and how it's vulnerable. But then the conversation turned from Retina to something called Blink. So I listened carefully. Heuristic analysis, integrated anti-virus and anti-malware, application level firewall; wow. Then he started explaining how it works and the theory behind the code. You have to listen to Marc for yourself, because I will not do him justice. Basically, Blink doesn't _need_ updated like your normal AV program does. It works almost entirely off of heuristics. What does that mean? Well, when the world was scurrying around trying to patch the big ANI vulnerability, Blink users were already protected. This wasn't because they had released a patch quicker than Microsoft or Symantec did, it was because they didn't need to release a patch. Blink already protected hosts from the ANI vulnerability because it's heuristic engine detected it and blocked it.Believe me, I'm not trying to do a product pitch. However, security is something you need to think long and hard about. If you don't, you deserve every virus you get. Ok, so how many hundreds of dollars does a piece of software like this cost? Well, for personal use (Neighborhood Watch edition), it's 100% free, forever. If you want the next version up (Personal Edition), it's 100% free for one year. If you want Blink for your business, you should contact eEye to work out volume licensing.
Seriously though, free for 1 year? Yup. I would recommend going with the Personal Edition because it has integrated anti-virus and anti-malware support, whereas the Neighborhood Watch edition doesn't. The Professional Edition is $59 for 1 license. So, you can pretty much guarantee that the Personal Edition will be less that that when your free year is up and you have to pay. But still, eEye is a trusted company in the security field. I've registered to get my copy and I'll definitely put up my thoughts once I've used it for a while. But at a first glance, my professional opinion is to drop every other anti-virus, anti-malware, and firewall software you have running and use Blink.
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