Symbiot Security Releases S.A.R.A.

Symbiot Inc/Yahoo ^ | 12/18/03 | Press Release

[Pro-Bush]

Symbiot Security Releases S.A.R.A. Thursday December 18, 12:23 pm ET

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 18, 2003--Symbiot Inc. today announced the general availability of S.A.R.A. (Symbiot Artificial intelligence for the Remediation of Attack planning), a patent pending, military-class artificial intelligence for network security. With the equivalent of over 10 lifetimes of experience in network security, S.A.R.A. discovers potential compromises that would otherwise go undetected because they involve attack plans with a large number of steps. Such attacks often exploit several "minor" vulnerabilities spanning multiple machines and networks.

"The most critical vulnerabilities are not always the ones which in isolation appear to be the most serious," said Mike W. Erwin, president of Symbiot Inc. "S.A.R.A. reveals even the most sophisticated attack plans, which are typically executed as a series of steps designed to compromise network defenses, and S.A.R.A. provides step-by-step resolution procedures."

Unique in the security marketplace, Symbiot provides customers with critical intelligence about their security posture. S.A.R.A. represents the company's foundation in security technology because of its ability to infer relationships between attackers, attacks, methods and intent. By applying machine reasoning to the field of network security, Symbiot quantifies the significance and impact of potential attacks.

"Because of the competitive advantages S.A.R.A. represents, OEM licensing opportunities will be limited to a small number of platinum partners during 2004," said Erwin.

S.A.R.A. is currently available under Symbiot's OEM licensing program, and as a hosted solution for security consulting companies and managed security service providers.

About Symbiot

Symbiot® is the leader in the Intelligent Security Infrastructure Management Systems (iSIMS) marketplace. Symbiot's solutions provide real-time, intelligent, predictive tools for managing and analyzing streams of security event data. Symbiot's AI products rely on well-established, world-class inference and knowledge management engines. Symbiot's advanced developments represent some novel departures from the market norm. The company's approach to information security operates from the network fabric up, and is based on proprietary R&D that supports the Federal Government and other commercial strategic alliances

[Pro-Bush]

...military-class artificial intelligence for network security

[Cicero]

Sounds like another step into Neuromancer territory.

[Pro-Bush]

Yup, let the game begin!

[brownsfan]

Skynet?

[Poohbah]

Someone's trying to get a new round of venture capital through the liberal application of technobabble.

[taxcontrol]

You are correct sir. It is simply intrusion detection plus vulnerability determination based upon packet response plus an inference engine.

Slick, sexy, looks cool but still not as good as a security expert with years experience on both attack and prevention.

[Pro-Bush]

CyberSecurity has come to the forefront when it comes ensuring national security.

[Poohbah]

That may or may not be true. (Personally, I think "cyberwar" would turn into "Mutual Assured Annoyance.")

But it doesn't hide the fact that this press release is nothing but a bunch of technobabble aimed at getting venture capitalists to spend lots of money.

[Pro-Bush]

But it doesn't hide the fact that this press release is nothing but a bunch of technobabble aimed at getting venture capitalists to spend lots of money.

Venture Capitalists? Please explain.

The is a press release of product availability, not seeking funding for S.A.R.A., it has already been developed. VC is generally sought at the conceptual level. This article just says, "our product is available, come and buy it", targeted to the government and private sector.

[sarasmom]

I just want to go on record that I am not in any way related to this company or its product.
I am not computer literate enough to judge its worth.
Best of luck to them!

[adam_az]

You'd think these security geniuses would have realized that there is another security product called SARA, already, that it's been around for years, and that SARA is already trademarked for this purpose.

http://www-arc.com/sara/sara.html

I work in the "computer security industry," let me inform you all of something:

Security vendors sell products based on generating fear and hype, and follow up with an explanation of how their product is going to solve all of your earthly problems.

In other words, it's just like every other industry, and isn't populated by a group of selfless do-gooders.

Caveat Emptor!