Readers Review Hot Products

Simplify Systems Management
Brisworks Admin Arsenal
In a recent conversation about network monitoring software, a friend suggested that I give Admin Arsenal from Brisworks a try. After being impressed by the demo, I purchased the product for $250 and downloaded it from the Brisworks Web site.

I initially used the software to monitor workstations and event logs, but I've since begun using it to oversee my servers. Beyond network and system monitoring, my biggest use of the product has been for software distribution. Admin Arsenal creates software distributions easily, and it's very fast. When I needed to perform a quick software distribution, it completed the task swiftly and without any problems.

Admin Arsenal is also useful for running overnight system tests and tracking down system and network problems. Thanks to the speed and efficiency of the software distribution and reporting features, I've saved almost an entire workday every week—it really is that fast and efficient.

I've worked with IBM Tivoli and Microsoft Systems Management Server, and both are very powerful systems. They're also extremely expensive and unintuitive. For software distribution, I much prefer Admin Arsenal.

The one and only complaint I have about Admin Arsenal is that it doesn't look at any devices that exist outside of Active Directory. We have some Linux boxes and Macintosh computers on our network, but Admin Arsenal doesn't support them.

Remote Network Security and Administration
Visual Click Software's DSRAZOR
There are almost two dozen schools in our school district, and we needed to allow an employee at each school to change students' computer passwords without having to contact our main office. We have more than 16,000 students in our district, and having to manage every user account onsite was becoming a significant challenge.

I heard about Visual Click Software's DSRAZOR for Windows while searching for a utility that would help us with user management. DSRAZOR had received some great reviews, so I decided to give it a try. The software was easy to install, and we were pleased with how the support staff helped us learn how to use the application. DSRAZOR ships with preloaded user account functions that let you become productive immediately.

The features that appeal to me the most are the bulk user creation function and the ability to delegate specific permissions to other users so that they can create user accounts and change passwords. It's also easy to set up customized forms for delegation, and the product integrates well with Active Directory (AD)—you don't need to change anything in AD for DSRAZOR to work.

This product has saved the district many hours of work. What used to take us weeks to accomplish we are now able to do in a few days. We are no longer burdened by doing simple tasks such as creating user accounts or changing passwords. Although it would be nice if DSRAZOR offered more user-specific customization options, I would definitely recommend it to anyone who needs to simplify account management.

Proactively Protect Your Network from threats
ForeScout Technologies' CounterACT
When a consultant brought a laptop infected with the Code Red worm into our office a few years ago, the worm shut down the office for almost two days, and we learned the hard way that we needed a solution to prevent such attacks. We needed to control who could log on to our network and the capabilities those users had. We wanted a product that didn't rely only on signatures, and it had to be easy to manage.

After looking at several Network Access Control (NAC) solutions, we implemented ForeScout Technologies' CounterACT, a NAC and intrusion-prevention solution. CounterACT has a clientless approach, uses behavior detection, and is easy to manage. It also includes a pretty good vulnerability assessment tool, so one solution gives us three products: malware detection, NAC, and vulnerability assessment. CounterACT has come in handy on several occasions. For example, when a user opened a worm-infected email attachment, CounterACT immediately caught the problem and blocked the user from sending any messages. CounterACT also alerted us when an employee was using peer-to-peer applications against company policy so we could remove the programs.

We bought CounterACT a few years ago, and since then the market has changed considerably. In my view, however, the market is still playing catch-up to CounterACT