Internet-threat portal on tap from TippingPoint

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August 19, 2008 (Network World) TippingPoint is beta-testing a Web portal that lets customers view Internet-threat intelligence the company has gathered from around the globe, as well as polls of how other customers are dealing with those threats.

Called ThreatLinQ, the portal presents data from its three-year-old Lighthouse network of about 20 customer intrusion-prevention systems (IPS) in regions around the world. Lighthouse originally was set up to generate threat intelligence for TippingPoint's internal use. ( Compare IDS/IPS products.)

Other vendors, including McAfee and Symantec, also have portals detailing threats of the type their products can combat.

ThreatLinQ presents data from the management consoles of TippingPoint customers, data gathered as part of a program that customers can opt into. The idea is to give customers an idea of how their peers are configuring their machines to deal with threats.

The portal presents the kinds of attacks that are occurring and the IP addresses where they originate. Alongside each threat, the portal lists the number of which TippingPoint filter or filters will deal with the problem. It also tells whether that filter is turned on as a default on TippingPoint's IPS so customers can figure out more easily whether they need to make a change.

Visitors to the portal can click on a continent, region and country to get a representation of the most prevalent attacks. One feature is a list of Movers and Shakers, threats that have experienced 400% growth over the past two weeks.

ThreatLinQ has no option to post questions to other customers, but TippingPoint says it plans to add a forum to the portal later. It also plans to turn the portal into an add-on to its IPS service for a fee.

Reprinted with permission from

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