Product Watch: New WhiteHat Security Service Analyzes Preproduction Websites

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- RSA Conference 2011 -- WhiteHat Security will offer its security vulnerability assessment services for websites that are in the preproduction phase, the company announced here today.

Ravi Iyer, senior director of product management for WhiteHat, says the new Sentinel PL service will include the same features as the existing Sentinel service for production websites. "There's a price you pay when you have to fix a vulnerability in a production website ... In preproduction, you can find out what needs to be fixed and make choices to mitigate risk. This lowers the development costs" as well, Iyer says.

WhiteHat will complete the preproduction vulnerability assessment within three days, he says. The new service will be available in the second quarter.

Here is the full press release of the announcement:

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- February 14, 2011 -- WhiteHat Security, the leading provider of website risk management solutions, today announced WhiteHat Sentinel PL (PreLaunch), a new service to provide fast and accurate website vulnerability data prior to production deployment - reducing development and vulnerability remediation costs and increasing the overall security of customers’ websites.

Website vulnerabilities are a growing security concern and organizations are looking for ways to reduce risk earlier in the development cycle. WhiteHat Sentinel PL leverages WhiteHat's expertise in testing and verifying vulnerabilities in production websites and adds capabilities specifically designed to find vulnerabilities throughout the pre-production phases of website development. Vulnerabilities identified in the development stage can be remediated by developers at a much lower cost than after the site goes live. Just like the entire WhiteHat Sentinel service line, every vulnerability discovered by WhiteHat Sentinel PL is verified for accuracy by the WhiteHat Security Threat Research Center (TRC), ensuring only legitimate vulnerabilities are identified and reported to developers for remediation.

WhiteHat Sentinel PL is designed to fit into an organization’s existing development cycle rather than requiring a company to work around inflexible vulnerability assessment tools or processes. Sentinel PL is tuned for speed, offering tests that users can customize for timing, unit-testing specific areas of the site, or to target particular vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting. By assessing preproduction sites prior to production deployment of new code, Sentinel PL reduces overall remediation costs while reducing risk before the site is pushed to production and exposed to the world and potential security threats. When combined with other WhiteHat Security services – WhiteHat Sentinel Premium Edition (PE), Standard (SE) or Baseline (BE) – Sentinel PL delivers ongoing vulnerability management and protection in both preproduction and production environments.

"We're seeing enormous demand from our customers to extend the Sentinel platform to allow them to conduct quick and accurate tests in preproduction and return better results in an accelerated timeframe," said Bill Pennington, chief strategy officer, WhiteHat Security. “That customers are requesting this service reflects how the website risk management market is maturing and is another sign that website security is becoming a ‘must have’ for companies across all industries.”

"With Sentinel PL, WhiteHat is addressing the growing need to move security testing farther upstream in the software development lifecycle. Catching problems earlier means lower remediation costs and better-informed risk management in the release process," said Wendy Nather, senior analyst, Enterprise Security Practice, The 451 Group. 'In addition, since many applications end up being deployed differently in production, scanning them on both sides of the firewall improves the security coverage."

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