Review: NitroGuard IPS

For: A solid product with lots of features, including near real-time dashboard refresh.
Against: None that we could find.
Verdict: A solid product with good integration to other NitroView products, though a bit high-priced in its full configuration with the ESM. For its excellent performance, ease of use and flexibility, we award NitroView IPS our Recommended rating.

When used with the rest of the suite, it has extensive analysis capability beyond that normally found in an IPS. The IPS’s near real-time dashboard updates as new alerts arrive, rather than using a refresh cycle that does batch updating. We saw this in only one other product.

The product is easy to install and comes with a small installation guide that, though small, provides a good level of detail in such things as physical installation, cabling and selection of an appropriate IPS architecture.

One manages the appliance remotely from a software console that comes with it and there is an installation guide for the console.

If the organisation has the rest of the NitroView suite installed, the same console can be used for all obviating separate console installations.

We installed the IPS with the rest of the suite — NitroView Receiver and NitroView Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) — easily and tested with our Attack Pod.

The results were excellent with the product identifying our attacks at all levels and delivering its results to the ESM for analysis in near real time. Set-up and rule generation is straightforward and the use of wizards and menus eases the process.

Documentation is complete and comes on a separate CD. The main documentation includes all of the pieces of the NitroView suite so interconnection and interoperation is clearly presented in a single document. The PDF file is well indexed and the information we needed was very easy to find. Keyword/phrase searches, of course, are standard in PDF files.

Support offerings are rich with a variety of options. For all users there are two sections of the website with such things as manuals and white papers. All one needs to do is sign up.

In addition there are extra cost silver and gold support packages with a huge assortment of services, including advance hardware replacement and two-hour response (gold).

Priced at US$10,495, the NitroGuard is at the low end of the range. The ESM offers an enhanced level of analysis and adds US$19,995.

SC Magazine awards NitroGuard IPS its Recommended award.

idsipssecurity