AusCERT2012: The SC Award winners

Star Wars fans were tickled pink during the lights and sounds of the AusCERT and SC Magazine Awards on the Gold Coast last night.

Conference attendees turned out in drove to meet and photograph a band of the film's characters from Vader's 501st Legion who patrolled the room, entertaining the crowd and, at one point, arrested Microsoft's security boffin and legionary Star Wars geek, Adam Shostack.

But the point of the night - and the source of excitement for many - came in the AusCERT and SC Magazine Awards handed out during the dinner.

AusCERT remembered to bring the trophies for its awards this year, relieving MC Corrine Grant was of the need to hand out stolen hotel merchandise to winners.

The organisation's Individual Excellence in Information Security went to Shadowserver's Shaun Vlassis, a strong contender for several years.

Telstra CERT was commended for its incidence response efforts, bagging the Organisational Excellence in Information Security Award.

And AusCERT's Best Security Initiative went to the SCADA Community of Interest group, a veteran band of SCADA geeks who have made significant in-roads to bolster the profile of critical infrastructure security issues in Australia. 

The winners of the SC Awards followed. Those winners and finalists were chosen only after months of rigorous judging.

The Gatekeeper Award

This is awarded to the solution that best controlled who had access to information and provided logging, tracking and remediation in the event of misadventure.

Finalists:

Tripwire for log centre

McAfee for NitroSecurity

RSA for Netwitness

Winner:

RSA Netwitness.

Best SME Security Solution Award

This is awarded to the solution that protects small to mid-sized businesses from the threats they most likely face. It is awarded to that which best balances price with performance, is easy to use and is backed by affordable, reliable support. 

Finalists:

SonicWall for NSA2400MX

Fortinet for FortiGate 60C

Rapid7 for Nexpose.

The Protector Award

This is awarded to the product, suite or service that did the most to keep its users’ online presences functioning against threats such as DDoS, zero-day vulnerabilities, insider threats and brute force attacks.

Finalists:

Sourcefire for Next Generation Intrusion Prevention Systems (NGIPS)

IronKey for TrustedAccess

Imperva for SecureSphere

Winner:

Sourcefire.

The Innovation Award:

This award is presented to the project, individual or team that has changed the traditional practice of IT security.

Finalists:

McAfee for DeepSafe

Varonis for MetaData Framework

Winner:

Varonis

The Mobile Security Solution Award

This is awarded to the solution or provider that keeps data and applications safe and secure while travelling on networks, stored on removable media or “light OS” mobile devices.

Finalists:

Absolute Software for Computrace

JanusGate for JanusNET

Good Technology

Winner:

JanusGate, for JanusNET.

The Product or Service of the Year: 

This is presented to the organisation that through its products or services has:

• Increased customer satisfaction

• Improved its users’ security strategy

• Been a leader in innovation

• Filled an important market niche or answered a pressing and urgent customer demand

Finalists:

Varonis for MetaData Framework

Sophos for RED

Entrust, for Managed Services PKI

Winner:

Varonis.

The Vendor of the Year:

This award is presented to the organisation that has:

• Increased customer satisfaction or channel health

• Improved profitability or IT security strategy

• Been a leader in innovation

• Seen as an influencer of industry best practice 

Finalists:

Fortinet

Sophos

Sourcefire

Winner:

Sophos.

Nominations for the SC Awards 2013 open in September. There will be a series of tweaks to the awards format including the addition of an Australian-only category that's designed to identify emerging and established home-grown security.