Improved user experience through increased automation in version 9

Winner of the Best of TechEd award in 2007 and highly recommended by the judges at the SC Magazine Europe awards in 2008, GFI LANguard™ allows administrators to scan, detect, assess and rectify vulnerabilities on their network and to secure it with minimal administrative effort. The latest version builds on an extensive feature set to make it easier for users to manage network scans, install patches and get a complete picture of the security set-up on their network.

"Our philosophy is to provide our customers with products that are easy to download, install, configure and run. The new features in GFI LANguard™ are aimed at making it easier for administrators to use our software and to gain maximum benefit from the extensive functionality that the software provides," GFI's Vice-President of Product Engineering, Phil Bousfield said.

User experience

The user interface has been redesigned to make it easier to access the main functions of vulnerability management, and in version 9 the administrator is guided through the remediation process when a problem has been identified. A new dashboard not only provides a summary of the work flow during scans but also gives an estimate of the time required to complete the scan.

Network auditing

GFI LANguard™'s auditing function tells administrators what they need to know about their network by retrieving hardware information on memory, processors, display adapters, storage devices, motherboard details, printers, and so on. Using baseline comparisons they can now check whether any hardware was added / removed since last scan. In version 9, executive reports are now available directly from within GFI LANguard™.

Vulnerability management

The new version of GFI LANguard™ extends the products-scanning capabilities and now it is possible to identify and report on unauthorized software installations, e.g. peer-to-peer programs. The administrator can now also configure GFI LANguard™ to uninstall these applications whenever they are detected on the network.

With version 9, administrators can also identify whether a scanned machine is a physical or virtual machine, with support currently for VMware or Virtual PC. A new feature in GFI LANguard™ allows administrators to open a Remote Desktop connection with any target computer when browsing through the scan results. Thus issues not rectified automatically can be addressed manually using a remote desktop connection.

Automatic remediation of Microsoft patches has been included in the new version. Apart from automatically downloading missing Microsoft security patches, administrators can configure GFI LANguard™ to automatically deploy the missing patches or service packs at the end of scheduled scans. Administrators can still choose to deploy missing patches after they have been tested and approved.