Vulnerability scanning and detection is not a problem that you can solve once; rather, it's an ongoing process that never ends. New systems are added, old ones are replaced, and existing ones will have software added or modified. The continual scanning and monitoring of results is imperative to an effective VA program. Many VA products now offer the ability to report only changes between scans, such as newly responding ports that indicate a possible compromise and installation of a backdoor program, and newly added systems that may have circumvented the corporate installation process.
Jay Milne is a senior information security consultant with one of the nation's largest health care providers based in Northern California. Milne has deployed and managed VA solutions for both small and large companies. His day-to-day duties include IDS monitoring and response, incident response, and forensics. Send comments to [email protected].
TCO Analysis Details
The TCO analysis was executed using three different implementation scenarios: medium, large, and very large enterprises. Each scenario assumes a different number of active IP addresses scanned, as well as the number of scanners required. The latter will change depending on network architecture. Company politics and business can also affect the number of scanners required. For each scenario, it was assumed that one central database would store all the scanned data. Assumptions were made about the actual cost incurred to perform a task, and it is expressed as the total number of hours per year times an hourly rate. A $75 hourly rate was used, and was based on real-world cost data, averaged from several very large-sized companies. For each product, various internal costs were itemized. Download the full, customizable worksheet at www.networkmagazine.com/tco.
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