Bethesda, Md. – SANS Institute, the global leader in information security training, today announced the winners of the SANS Best of 2015 Awards which celebrates security products that make a difference. The award winners were driven by the people actually using these products, not vendors. Security operations professionals and security managers from within the SANS community participated in the voting.

According to John Pescatore, Director of Emerging Security Trends at SANS "Many survey respondents indicated that lack of skilled staff drove them to use external services or consultants rather than procure and use a product directly. This is consistent with the findings of the SANS CyberTalent program, which has been working to increase the size of the cybersecurity work force to enable companies to meet their staffing needs."

The SANS Best of Awards are an extension of the SANS WhatWorks Program which creates awareness of security programs and solutions that are actually being used to stop cybercrime and cyber espionage, improve security and enable business. The Best of 2015 Award winners and honorable mentions will be recognized on Wednesday, March 16th at the SANS 2016 (Orlando) training event. Award winners include:

Vulnerability Assessment

Winner:
Tenable Nessus

Honorable Mention:
Rapid7
NMAP/Qualys

Next Generation Firewall

Winner:
Fortinet Fortigate

Honorable Mention:
Palo Alto Networks
Cisco

Advanced Threat Detection

Winner:
FireEye Intrusion NX

Honorable Mention:
Snort
Cisco/Sourcefire

End Point Protection

Winner:
Symantec Endpoint Protection

Honorable Mention:
Intel McAfee
CarbonBlack (Bit9)

Application Security

Winner:
Qualys WAS

Honorable Mention:
Fortigate Fortiweb
IBM Appscan

SIEM

Winner:
IBM Security QRadar

Honorable Mention:
Splunk
HP ArcSight

Threat Intelligence

Winner:
FireEye Threat Intelligence

Honorable Mention:
Fortinet
Tie: iDefense (Verisign)/RSA

Forensic Software

Winner:
Guidance Software Encase Forensics

Honorable Mention:
Access Data
Paraben

WhatWorks is an integrated user-to-user program that enables organizations thathave implemented effective security technologies to tell the story of why they deployed it, how it works, how they know it actually improves security, what problems they faced and what lessons they learned. To learn more about the products that have demonstrated actual success in improving security, please visit: www.sans.org/critical-security-controls/best-of-awards

About SANS Institute

The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. Today, SANS is the most trusted and, by far, the largest provider of cyber security training and certification to professionals in government and commercial institutions world-wide. Renowned SANS instructors teach more than 60 courses at in-person and virtual cyber security training events and on demand. GIAC, an affiliate of the SANS Institute, validates practitioner skills through more than 35 hands-on, technical certifications in cyber security. The SANS Technology Institute, a regionally accredited independent subsidiary, offers a master’s degree, graduate certificates, and an undergraduate certificate in cyber security. SANS Security Awareness, a division of SANS, provides organizations with a complete and comprehensive security awareness solution, enabling them to easily and effectively manage their ‘human’ cybersecurity risk. SANS also delivers a wide variety of free resources to the InfoSec community including consensus projects, research reports, webcasts, podcasts, and newsletters; it also operates the Internet's early warning system–the Internet Storm Center. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners, representing varied global organizations from corporations to universities, working together to support and educate the global information security community. (https://www.sans.org)