For ease of use and value, Sunbelt Software's Network Security Inspector (SNSI) 1.5 was given this year's Silver Award in the security category.

Judges noted that SNSI delivers commercial-grade vulnerability scanning that detects more than 3,000 ranked vulnerabilities in multiple operating system platforms and applications. SNSI version 1.0 was released in February 2004, followed by version 1.5 in July.

SNSI was also given high marks in the areas of functionality and performance. Targeted at the SMB market, SNSI costs $1,495 per administrator. The newest version supports Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, Red Hat, SuSE and Mandrake Linux, Cisco routers and HP printers.

Its scanning wizards allows custom scan groups by IP range, vulnerability, port, machine or any combination, or you can use predefined scans such as "high risk" or "SANS Institute's top 20."

You can also search for specific vulnerabilities based on a number of fields, use prioritized and customizable vulnerability reports and eliminate vulnerabilities found using SNSI's recommended solutions, which in many cases include links to related Web sites that provide further information on manually fixing a vulnerability.

Robyn Lorusso, editor