Sourcefire, a provider of intrusion-management products based on the popular open-source Snort technology, plans this week to unveil a new technology that promises to boost intrusion-detection performance.

The company's new Real-Time Network Awareness (RNA) appliance passively monitors the network to detect hosts and what operating systems and services they're running, said Martin Roesch, Sourcefire founder and CTO. RNA also detects changes on the network, policy violations and traffic patterns.

RNA provides intrusion-detection technology with context to discern whether systems on the network are actually vulnerable to attack, he said. An intrusion-detection system says the network is being attacked but can't say whether the target of the attack is actually vulnerable, he said.

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