The Pipeline

Storage to the Maximus
If you need to carry large amounts of data around, USB thumb drives may not cut it. Despite their increasingly large capacities - we have seen one that can store 64G - they still pale in comparison to devices such as hard drives.

But you can't just pop your hard drive in and out of your computer.

That's why some companies specialize in portable, external hard drives. The drives connect to PCs with a cable and have protective casings to withstand bumps during travel. One new large-capacity portable hard drive on the market is the Maximus Platinum from Anami Communications, the information technology consulting and services division of Cornet Technology.

This 1-terabyte hard drive can store massive files: 3-D image banks, video files, financial documents and engineering files. It's also useful for backing up multiple workstations.

"This is the smallest 1-terabyte hard drive on the market," said Radhika Subramanian, product and marketing manager for the Anami Communications. "It's portable, convenient and easy to use." The device is about the size of a brick and weighs about 4.5 pounds.

The drive's enclosure is aluminum to allow heat to dissipate, and it also has a built-in cooling fan. You can transfer data to and from the drive via USB 2.0, FireWire 800 or FireWire 400. The drives can also connect to other devices using FireWire connections.

The driver-free Maximus Platinum is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP/2000 and Apple Computer Macintosh OS X.

That makes sense
Enterprise networks have enterprise budgets, so spending what it takes to get the necessary security is generally not a problem.

But what's a small, remote office with a low budget to do? Remote offices are as vulnerable to security threats as corporate offices, and they can also serve as access points for launching attacks on enterprises.

One option is to install a security sensor such as the new Smart Sensor 20 or the Smart Sensor 50 from NFR Security.

The affordable, low-end sensors are new additions to the company's family of Sentivist Smart Sensors. They deliver the same level of protection as enterprise-class security but at a lower price.

All of NFR Security's products are IPv6-compliant. The federal government has mandated that agencies must move their network backbones to IPv6 by June 30, 2008, and NFR Security is one of only two intrusion-prevention system vendors whose products already meet this mandate.

The new sensors offer real-time threat protection via NFR Security's Dynamic Shielding Architecture, which can automatically recognize threat points and alert administrators.

The sensors also deliver network intelligence information by correlating and graphically displaying current threat point information and critical vulnerabilities. Administrators can choose to rank those vulnerabilities by severity, impact or application.

Thanks to a hybrid detection engine, the sensors can use multiple detection and analysis techniques including vulnerability signatures, exploit signatures, anomaly detection, protocol analysis and deep packet inspection.