Bytware Brings StandGuard AntiVirus to p5 Unix Servers

Published: February 16, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Back in 2003, a security software vendor called Bytware, which specializes in the IBM iSeries server market space, brought out a product called StandGuardAV to protect the non-OS/400 file systems on the iSeries server. This product was based on the antivirus scanning engine created by McAfee, which is one of the big sellers of antivirus software for PCs and servers. After starting on the iSeries and moving to Linux, Byware's StandGuardAV is now branching out to AIX.

About a decade ago, IBM grafted the high performance version of the OS/2 file system onto OS/400 to allow it to store native ASCII data on the server. This was great for file serving performance, since files were no longer stored in the AS/400's integrated database management system and did not have to be translated back and forth between IBM's EDCDIC and the industry standard ASCII formats. But no good deed goes unpunished in the IT world, and the fact that it was an ASCII-based OS/2 file system meant that the AS/400 and iSeries servers could be a repository for viruses and worms and other stuff, even if the OS/400 operating system itself could not get sick from these nasties. In any event, Bytware made a nice business for itself selling StandGuardAV for iSeries shops, and as IBM has brought first Linux and then AIX environments to the iSeries' logical partitions, Bytware has extended coverage to those platforms, too.

Last fall, Bytware announced that it had created StandGuard for Linux, which is a standalone product for any Linux platforms as well as for Linux partitions on iSeries boxes, and this week, Bytware is delivering a version of the product that supports AIX 5L V5.2 and V5.3 on standalone IBM pSeries and p5 servers. By doing so, AIX shops can detect, contain, and eradicate threats originating on AIX servers, which is how you contain any outbreak of malicious code. Pricing starts at $750 for up to 50 users, including the first year of support. An unlimited user license costs $3,500.