Service packs for international operating systems and patches for international versions of Microsoft Office can now be managed by GFI LANguard N.S.S.

London, UK, 23 July 2003 – GFI today announced the release of GFI LANguard Network Security Scanner (N.S.S.) 3.3, which offers patch management for German, French, Italian and other languages. A version for Spanish users will be available shortly. Prior to version 3.3, GFI LANguard N.S.S. could only deploy patches for English language Microsoft Office versions and service packs for English language operating systems.

“GFI LANguard N.S.S. 3.3 now offers patch management for international customers too,” said Emmanuel Carabott, Security Researcher at GFI. “Although there are various patch management solutions, these can’t actually patch international versions of Microsoft Office or deploy service packs on non-English versions of Windows. This is because links to patches and deployment methods are actually different for a German version of Microsoft Office, for instance. GFI LANguard N.S.S. is one of the first patch management solutions to support international patching.”

Affordable patch management
GFI LANguard N.S.S. in combination with Microsoft SUS (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/windowsupdate/sus/) is a complete patch management solution that offers all the features found in more expensive patch management products at a fraction of their cost: While most solutions range from US$1,500 for a 100-machine license to US$8,000 for a 500-machine license, the combined solution of GFI LANguard N.S.S. and Microsoft SUS is much more cost-effective. Microsoft SUS is free and pricing for GFI LANguard N.S.S. licenses starts from as little as $295 for 25 IPs.

Better patch management
Microsoft SUS is a patch management solution for all Windows operating systems (Windows 2000/2003, XP, .NET, IIS, IE, Windows Media). It outperforms other patch management solutions but is limited in that it cannot deploy service packs (SPs), NT patches and application patches/SPs such as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange Server or third party software. It is also relatively weak in reporting. GFI LANguard N.S.S. overcomes these shortcomings by enabling the deployment of such SPs and patches, while also being able to check whether all patches have been installed correctly.

About GFI LANguard N.S.S.
Apart from providing patch management, GFI LANguard N.S.S. can also check networks for all potential methods that a hacker might use to attack them. By analyzing the operating system and the applications running on a network’s machines, GFI LANguard N.S.S. determines all the possible security holes. In other words, it plays the devil's advocate, and alerts the administrator to weaknesses before a hacker can find them, enabling the organization to deal with the issues before a hacker exploits them. For more information and to download the product, visit http://www.gfi.com/lannetscan/.