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	Issue TOC Print full article Print this page Download as PDF E-Mail this URL Discuss this article Flame the author     In this article Introduction BindView Development Corp. bv-Control 7.2 and Policy Operations Center 4.2 Configuresoft Enterprise Configuration Manager 4.0 with Security Update Manager 2.0 Pedestal Software SecurityExpressions 3.0 Symantec Enterprise Security Manager 5.5 PoliVec Security Policy Automation Suite (Builder 2.6, Scanner 3.5, Enforcer 1.1) NetIQ VigilEnt Security Manager 4.0 Computer Associates eTrust Policy Compliance 7.4 How We Tested Report Card

VigilEnt Security Manager (VSM) is a mixed bag of good and lame features at an expensive price. As with CA's product, the cost bump is in the server space. VigilEnt Policy Manager (VPM) is similar to PoliVec Builder in that policies can be developed and used as templates against target computers. Although VSM requires agents on target systems, proxy agents can scan up to a recommended maximum of 50 targets. Each target still uses a license, but you save the problem of deploying agents everywhere. Agents can be installed remotely; however, we ran into weird problems--the agents would install and run and then the service would shut down and issue a Dr Watson. Neither we nor NetIQ could determine the cause.

Reports are detailed, and we found customizing existing reports and creating new ones no more or less difficult than with other products we tested. We did, however, have difficulties limiting the data that was returned. For example, we wanted a report that listed only accounts that could act as part of the OS, but no dice. Could we do this with the products from Computer Associates and Configuresoft? Why, yes, we could. Applying a filter to a report isn't the same as generating the desired report automatically.

We build ad hoc queries, and VSM made interactive queries easy to make by letting us define a variable name for a parameter. The value is requested at run time. For example, we created a query that showed all the owners of files within a file system. Then we specified the directory that should be used as the search root. As for remediation, VSM was one of the weakest products we tested--it could manipulate only user objects.