Review: GTB Technologies Inspector

For: A feature-rich, easy-to-manage product, which gives central control to network flow. Against: The GTB Technologies Inspector is not cheap. Verdict: If your enterprise can afford the fees, it would be tough to choose another product.

The GTB Inspector is an appliance which, while heavy, provides numerous features.

GTB Technologies prides itself on using the Inspector for detection and prevention of events. The inspector performs two of the three most common data leakage scenarios by protecting data in motion from leaving the company network.

The second feature is a device protection feature which stops users from saving confidential information to a USB drive. The next release (due out soon) also provides protection by combing through the file system of the agent to look for critical files and data. The Inspector comes with several defined policies to match up with legal compliance. There are four main responses for non-compliant users. These are to log, encrypt, quarantine and redact.

Since GTB Inspector is a network device, many people think about the use of encryption, such as SSL or PGP, to defeat the inspection. It works with BlueCode and Microsoft's ISA server to terminate the encryption. The Inspector then takes the decrypted message and compares the unencrypted traffic against the inspector ruleset.

This information is forwarded to a device, such as a PGP server, which will then encrypt the data and send it along. The tool uses some advanced filtering technology to keep confidential documents safe. A Word document can be converted to PDF file format or ZIPed with a password, and Inspector will still recognise the contents of the file.

The installation is simple. The device comes preloaded with software and requires a basic power and network connection. The interface to the product is exceptionally laid out and is quite easy to understand and follow.

The only disappointing part of the offering is the documentation. As is the norm for the industry, it comes in the form of PDF files. We found even the quick-start guide to be troublesome because the unit has VGA and USB ports, and the documentation never stated which to use and, in fact, it made it sound as if there was a PS/2 connector for the keyboard.

Support is included with the purchase of the product with upgrades to 7/24 coverage coming at an additional fee.

The pricing for the GTB Technologies Investigator is $20,000 for the server, plus US$29.95 annually per node.

See original article on SC Magazine US

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