The Sourcefire® Vulnerability Research Team (VRT) is a group of leading edge network security experts working around the clock to proactively discover, assess and respond to the latest trends in hacking activities, intrusion attempts and vulnerabilities. Some of the most renowned security professionals in the industry, including the authors of several standard security reference books, are members of the Sourcefire VRT. This team is also supported by the vast resources of the open source Snort® community, making it the largest group dedicated to vulnerability reasearch and advances in the network security industry.

The Sourcefire Vulnerability Research Team:

• Leads the IDS/IPS industry in delivering rules that provide same day protection for critical Microsoft Tuesday vulnerabilities.
• Develops the official Snort rules used by the Sourcefire 3D® System.
• Maintains a community rule set that contains rules submitted by members of the open source community and tested by the VRT to ensure they work using the latest version of Snort.

Many network security vendors boast about their response times to the release of vulnerabilities—for instance, the monthly “Microsoft Tuesday”—when Microsoft announces many vulnerabilities and releases patches to end users. The Sourcefire VRT is the only network security research group that provides protection that verifiably defends against all possible attacks, before particular methods of attack are known, and without creating false positives or false negatives. The white paper details how Snort’s open rules give customers advantages they cannot get from other network security products.