The solution aims to enable customers to turn RNA's real-time knowledge of network composition and traffic behaviour into a compliance policy at the click of a mouse.

Craig Rosewarne of Concilium Technologies says historically compliance monitoring has been an iterative process, where compliance audits were performed as infrequently as once per year. Even for the most diligent compliance administrators, defining compliance policies in complex business environments has been an overwhelming task, he adds.

RNA 4.0 is designed to directly address both of these challenges and to turn compliance into a truly real-time process while also making the definition and enforcement of IT policies highly automated and easy to maintain, he adds.

"Just as Sourcefire served to define the self-securing network, it is again re-defining critical aspects of real-time network compliance enforcement," says EMA senior analyst, Scott Crawford. "Auditors are taking a dim view of companies that simply report on compliance at isolated points in time. The demands of maintaining network security coupled with mandates to assure continuous compliance oblige administrators to maintain compliance on a persistent basis."

Rosewarne says Sourcefire's RNA has protection that helps to ensure continued business operations during an attack and reduced damage-clean-up costs.

"RNA helps protect networks against attacks by providing information on rogue servers and applications that may have been unknowingly added to the network. It also provides administrators with visibility into specific applications and assets that are present and/or being used on the network and how, when, and by whom they are being used," he says.