NGS Software Typhon is more of a traditional network vulnerability
assessment tool with some application intelligence built in. The
utility was able to locate FTP-based vulnerabilities on our test
system, but had difficulties with web assessment. The utility did not
display the name of URLs found during the crawl or group the
vulnerabilities by category. Typhon was fooled with the custom error
pages into believing pages existed that did not. This yielded a list of
non-existent pages and directories without much detail as to actual
vulnerabilities. The number of false positives reported by the utility
was well over 100.
This utility would perform well as a traditional network
vulnerability assessment tool, but lacks the features necessary to
perform a web-based application vulnerability assessment. A unique
feature to this utility is the ability to check for other ports open
(which also created additional false positive responses), as well as an
included war dialer. The utility offers one level of report that is
easy to read and understand for the technician.
The installation of Typhon was very simple and required only
clicking "next" a few times to install the utility. Once Typhon was
installed, the utility was logically laid out and included an almost
unnecessary wizard to configure the scan. Typhon also uninstalled
cleanly and easily leaving the systems in their original states.
Documentation for the utility comes primarily through the included
help files with the utility. The files are complete and can assist an
administrator with configuration troubles. The utility is simple enough
to use that help files and documentation should not be necessary for
most administrators.
The primary method of support is through email, with messages said to be responded to the next business day.
The pricing for Typhon was in the middle of the range of products
tested at $10,445 (unlimited IP), which included the email support. The
price is a bit high for the included features, and it performs more as
a network vulnerability assessment application. It is priced more for
that category.