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Rapid-response capabilities are a combination of technology and process: Organizations with response procedures, timely access to router and firewall reprogramming capabilities, and the ability to tune their Web caching engines saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in downtime and repair costs.

The enterprise firewall market is dominated by Cisco and Check Point, according to Gartner, with NetScreen slowly gaining ground. Check Point packs in more options than a Japanese cell phone, but

it will be interesting to see if Cisco and NetScreen start leveraging their integration plans to gain ground. NetScreen is looking to integrate its recently acquired OneSecure inline NIPS and normalization technology into its firewall line, and Cisco has begun putting firewall, VPN (virtual private networking) and IDS functionality into its core switching platforms.

Finally, organizations that are looking for more than just a strong front door may want to keep an eye on Intruvert Networks, TippingPoint Technologies, NetScreen and others that offer Layer 7 inspection and scrubbing features. While few will argue the security benefits of traditional Layer 7 application-proxy-based firewalls, the lack of clear development progress on many traditional proxy-based solutions, such as Secure Computing's SideWinder and Gauntlet (recently acquired from Network Associates) and Symantec's Raptor, has left many practitioners scratching their heads. Some of the "normalization" features found in OpenBSD have sparked interest, and products such as OneSecure's (now NetScreen's) IDP offer a curious blend of intrusion prevention and normalization features.We may see such "proxy killers" gain momentum in the coming months (for more on normalization, see www.aciri.org/vern/papers/norm-usenix-sec-01.pdf).