ServGate Technologies this week will announce an alliance with IBM to offer managed security services to customers who own ServGate EdgeForce security appliances.
With the service, customers get IBM to assess their network vulnerability monthly and recommend action to shore up weaknesses. The intent of the partnership is to present a package to customers that can beef up corporate security beyond the tasks that ServGate performs, such as virus scanning, spam and URL filtering, firewalling and acting as a VPN gateway.
The IBM services include incident management for when, say, a network comes under a denial-of-service attack. IBM alerts the customer and helps resolve the problem.
IBM also provides a security alert service that culls security resources to find new threats that could harm corporate networks and then tells customers about them.
IBM and ServGate will provide security workshops as part of the service to bring customers up to speed on threats and the way to combat them.
The cost of the vulnerability assessment is US$150 per month per Class C IP address. Security alerts are free as are incident reports plus one hour of consulting per month, ServGate says.