IPS - Tipping Point vs. ISS?

[Dave Koontz <dkoontz () MBC EDU>]

All, after evaluating several IPS products, we have narrowed our selection
down to two products, Tipping Point and IIS Proventia along with their Host
Agents.   I've been searching for product & service comparisons between the
companies and technologies, but frankly everything mostly deals with older
models and past problems that have long been resolved.

Reviews of these products are also mostly identical.   Both seem to have
solid rulesets with the most vicious exploit rules enabled by default.
Seems that the biggest separator is the ISS Proventia Server Agent
integration (basically BlackIce) which can do file system baseline /
variance reporting, monitor encrypted traffic to the host, and provides
basic auditing of things like the event log, and has agents for both windows
and *Nix.

If anyone has recently done a comparison of these products at both the
network edge and in the core, I'd appreciate any feedback and why you choose
one product over the other.

Thanks in advance!


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Dave Koontz
Associate Director CIS
Mary Baldwin College
Staunton VA 24401