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The article focuses on the computer security platforms and products being offered by companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. These giant companies are opt to be considered as overall computer security providers. Microsoft offers a total computer security platform including the access control, tokens and scanning software designed to make a computer system hack-free and virus-free. On the other hand, Cisco offers a total security platform based on a dominant network model that can search, isolate and thwart the passage of bad code before it rampages the computer system.

This article reports on the availability of new tools for information technology managers who are looking for ways to protect their systems from worms and other attacks while they work to test and install security patches issued by software vendors. For example, Blue Lane Technologies Inc. introduced a security appliance called PatchPoint that addresses specific vulnerabilities in Windows operating system and other products. But instead of requiring users to install software on their systems, PatchPoint sits in front of servers and mimics the full functionality of vendor-issued patches.

This article introduces F5 Networks Inc.'s Application Security Module (ASM) that adds security features to its Big-Internet protocol line of appliances for managing application traffic and performance. ASM provides users with an application-layer firewall that is designed to protect Web-based systems against buffer overflow attacks, compromises of access-control mechanisms, worms, and other problems. In addition, cloaking features are included to conceal error messages from end users.

This article features Microsoft Research Ltd.'s Vigilante, an experimental software that can detect worms in network traffic, even new ones with no known signatures, then generates filters against them and sends alerts to other machines on the network. The process is quick enough to block worms before humans are even aware of their existence. Computers running Vigilante generate self-certifying alerts when they detect an attack and then send them to other machines, which can verify the alerts before taking defensive action.

This article reports that Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) disclosed a major security flaw in its data backup software, and analysts said that the problem is an example of the kind of vulnerabilities that are making storage software more attractive to malicious hackers. CA released patches to fix what it described as a critical vulnerability in its BrightStor ARCserve agent software, which is used to back up and restore data between servers and storage devices.