Fortify Defender provides a layer of security monitoring within existing, custom Web applications. It can be applied to existing executables without requiring access to the application's original source code; as such, it is targeted to those organizations who deploy packaged applications and/or must deploy applications that are known to have vulnerabilities.

To use the product, you first point it at an application to be protected. The Instrumenter component of Fortify Defender creates a "hardened" version of the application that automatically monitors the application's activity (including all instances of the application) for potentially malicious behavior or interactions. The vendor states that the product monitors security-critical functions and application programming interfaces (APIs) from inside the Web application itself, watching for malicious behavior via multiple detection algorithms including signature, behavioral and anomaly-based techniques. The product leverages the vendor's knowledge of secure coding rules, as gained through their companion source code analysis product offerings. Additional monitoring features include support for custom white and black lists for specific input fields.

The Console component of Fortify Defender completes the platform; itself Web browser based and can be installed on any machine. The console communicates with the Fortify Defender guards that were inserted into the applications during the instrumentation.

Various actions can be defined by administrators to be performed when violations are detected, including logging the action, issuing a challenge/response mechanism to the user, executing an alternate code path, or blocking the action completely. Alerting is also supported.

In addition to its ability to monitor and protect individual applications, Fortify Defender can also be used to report data detailing the types of attacks being levied against the applications. The vendor states that reports are available detailing who is attacking, by what techniques, how often, and more. Dashboards also feature drill-down capabilities.

Originally available for J2EE applications, Fortify Defender is now available for both J2EE and .Net apps. Supported DB repositories include IBM DB2 UDB, Oracle 10g, MySQL, and SQL Server; while supported Web servers include Tomcat, BEA WebLogic, Websphere, and Oracle Application Server.

Pricing starts at $25,000.

Contact Fortify Software for further information.