RedWall

Novatix bills their RedWall product, which they intend to offer in Personal, Small Business, and Corporate Editions, as complementary to existing anti-virus and firewall platforms. The product offers zero-day protection from file based threats via black box-based file preview and examination capabilities. The Personal version of the product is now in open beta (interested individuals should visit the Novatix Web site) and the Corporate Edition is expected to be available in early Q1, 2005.

Specifically, RedWall provides preview and analysis capabilities for specific on Windows PCs; most commonly, Internet downloads or E-mail attachments. The program integrates with MS Outlook/Outlook Express, and, according to the vendor, can additionally be configured to work with any other E-mail program. The program also provides integration capabilities with Internet Explorer (5.01+) for the automated analysis and in-browser previewing of downloaded files (.doc, .pdf, .zip, etc.) before saving such files to the computer's hard drive; as well as integrates with MS Explorer, offering a preview pane that can be set to float or positioned at the top/bottom of the Explorer window.

As RedWall previews the file, it additionally scans for malicious behavior within the file, and notifies the user when such behavior is identified. RedWall understands how to display over 200 different types of files, and thus, in addition to its protective capabilities, can be used as a file previewer in scenarios where the full application used to generate the file is not present on the client's machines. For example, a PowerPoint presentation can be viewed on a machine that doesn't actually contain PowerPoint.

According to information provided by the vendor, the primary component of the Corporate Edition of the RedWall platform will be the vendor's Novatix Enterprise Management Omnisystem (NEMO), a central console allowing for management of the RedWall client utility in addition to other security products the vendor plans to release following RedWall. NEMO allows the admin to push setup/configuration parameters to the individual clients; all RedWall configuration parameters are supported, including which files must be previewed, which programs require RedWall to preview their files before launching them, and which E-mail attachments must be previewed. NEMO will additionally: report which machines are currently protected via RedWall; support the pushing of RedWall software updates; and provide organization-wide event (blocked-threats) reporting.

The Personal Edition of RedWall is available in beta now (free) expected pricing at full release is $49.95 with volume discounts available. Corporate Edition pricing has not yet been finalized.

Contact Novatix for further information.