SANS Institute

The SANS (SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security) Institute was started in 1989 as a research and education organization. Today, its programs get to more than 165,000 auditors, Chief Information Officers (CIOs), network administrators, and security professionals who share with each other lessons they have learned about information security. They try to find solutions to the cyber challenges they encounter.

The SANS Institute shared resources include a weekly vulnerability digest (@RISK), the weekly NewsBites news digest, the Internet Storm Center warning system for the Internet, flash security alerts, and more than 1,200 award-winning research papers.

During the first week of May 2005, for example, the SANS Institute warned that in the first quarter of 2005, more than 600 new system vulnerabilities were detected, including flaws in products by Microsoft Corporation, Computer Associates, Oracle, McAfee and F-Secure, Trend Micro, Symantec Corporation, and some relatively new “players” such as RealPlayer, iTunes, and WinAmp.

See Also: Administrator; Network; Security; Symantec Corporation; Vulnerabilities of Computers.