NMCI launching ManHunt

The Navy Marine Corps Intranet has added Symantec Corp.'s ManHunt network intrusion-detection system to its security arsenal.

The ManHunt deployment, announced last week, falls under a Raytheon Co. subcontract. Raytheon is responsible for managing information assurance requirements for EDS, the prime contractor on the NMCI project.

Symantec has had an ongoing relationship with NMCI since March 2001, when it was selected to provide 10 security products. Symantec already has reinforced NMCI with NetProwler, Norton AntiVirus, Raptor Firewall and Mail-Gear.

The addition of Symantec ManHunt gives network managers advanced intrusion detection at high speeds and real-time threat analysis to defend against network attacks.

As the Navy continues to roll out its massive enterprise network to some 360,000 desktops, one of the benefits Navy officials foresee is heightened network security. Experts say that NMCI has inherent benefits that should improve upon the Navy's traditionally disjointed way of operating its networks.

When combined with previous orders, the latest offering makes NMCI the largest intrusion-detection system customer for Symantec in the Defense Department.

Symantec also provides antivirus and security protection to the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Symantec last year purchased Redwood City, Calif.-based Recourse Technologies Inc. and, with it, the ManHunt technology, for $135 million. ManHunt uses anomaly-based detection and advance protocol monitoring to ferret out potential intrusions even in high-speed Gigabit Ethernet networks. Anomaly-based detection systems search for abnormal patterns in network traffic rather than relying on predefined rules or "attack signatures" to detect hostile traffic.