Beta site wanted

Thu Jan 3 14:17:17 PST 2002

Hi all.

I'm looking for a guinea pig company (a.k.a a beta site) to run our
"flagship" product, Everguard.

My company, Gibraltar Software, has been in stealth mode now for about 6
months writing all the code and testing our product, but we're ready now
to start testing it in customer sites outside of our QA Lab and our
internal network.

What is Everguard?

Everguard is a software security management tool.  

Using a simple software agent on a customer computer (a "target" system
in our lexicon) a software and hardware inventory of the target is
collected and transmitted to a central server which resides behind the
cutomer's (i.e., your) firewall.  That customer server periodically
downloads from us (Gibraltar Software) a list of all known software
vulnerabilities for each supported operating system flavor.

Then the customer server matches your software inventory with the
vulnerability index and (if desired) sends notification to the
administrator responsible for any system with a detected vulnerability.

These action items can be dispensed with in a variety of ways: you can
patch the computer (we point you to the patch file), you can ignore the
problem, you can mark it as "fixed" (i.e., false positive -- this
shouldn't happen much), or you can "defer" it. A deferral means that you
don't want to ignore a problem forever; just for a couple days while you
fight some other fire. 

The customer server collects metrics about all of the target systems
including: all of its known vulnerabilities, software installed,
hardware installed and other data. (Like, my favorite, the average
"Window of Exposure" time from detection to correction).  

In addition to notification of vulnerabilities, Everguard can create
very professional looking reports for management (i.e., your boss) which
precisely shows why you deserve a raise at review time.

What are we looking for?

Our three initial target operating systems are: Red Hat Linux 6.2 or
later, Microsoft Windows 2000 (only -- for the moment), and Solaris 2.7
or later.

We're looking for a shop with approximately 100 computers with some
sample of each OS we're supporting (although larger shops wouldn't
necessarily be bad) and some kind of laboratory environment on site. 
The lab is so we can prove our software isn't malware before we roll it
out to a production box or network.

What do you get out of this?

My eternal gratitude for starters.  

But if that's not enough, we are offering "substantially" discounted
licenses for our final release product.  (Final release will be in six
to eight weeks or so.)

The cost to participate in the beta site will be minimal: your (or your
team's) time. We will pay for the server at your site and all of the
professional services of installing and rolling out the product at your
site on your schedule for deployment.

What do we expect out of this?

1. Good solid feedback on current product implementation
2. Good solid feedback on future product features
3. Good bug reports (if any -- very unlikely, though -- ha ha)
4. And, if all goes well, a customer reference.

Sound interesting?

You may direct further questions and/or comments to me by phone (below)
or via email. Yes, we are fully buzzword compliant here at Gibraltar.
:-)

Thank you for your time,

Mark Allen
408-585-3420 ext. 20
-- 
mallen at gibraltarsoft.com -- http://www.gibraltarsoft.com 
"If you can dream it, you can do it." -- Walt Disney 
"This is false." -- Larry Wall
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