IBM Updates ISS Endpoint Desktop Tools with New Security Capabilities

By Brian Turner

IBM, in an alliance with software developer BitDefender, is updating Internet Security Systems’ desktop security package with new anti-virus and anti-spyware technology.

ISS Proventia Desktop Endpoint Security, which is expected to be available by the end of the year, aims to help companies manage the protection of PCs from external attacks.

BitDefender anti-virus tools have been integrated into the ISS system which now provides personal firewall, intrusion prevention, buffer overflow protection, application and communications defence, and virus prevention technologies.

This is the first upgrade of ISS’s endpoint security software since IBM acquired the company in August 2006. It follows the company’s launch of a new ISS-branded security management appliance on 13 November, the first product released after the companies’ merger.

IBM is expanding the ISS software to offer more tightly integrated security applications. The company is pulling the various technologies together to operate using a single software on the PC. This gives IT administrators a single interface to manage multiple desktop security functions and enables individual tools to share information more efficiently to help prevent security breaches.

BitDefender’s software adds more traditional signature-based virus protection to the package. Signature-based systems deal with threats that have already been identified by security researchers. The system already features advanced behaviour-based anti-malware technologies which are designed to discover new attacks.

ISS is also experimenting with adding other tools to the Proventia Desktop Endpoint Security package to help protect against internal threats, such as data leakage prevention technology and tools used to manage user privileges for saving data to portable storage devices.