August 18, 2007

Challenging the agent overload

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"Agents offer value. They allow you to extend your policy outside of your network and to control activities on endpoints no matter where they are. But there is a need to reduce the complexity of agents," Kolodgy says. "Security is great, but if you can't manage it, it lapses over time. You have to be diligent and vigilant with the agents that are required for defence in depth. Vendors must provide smart management with their agents."

When it comes to monitoring performance on endpoints, however, the agent discussion takes a turn. Many argue that unless IT managers want to be able to take actions on each client or server, there is no need to place a pesky systems management agent on each device. For instance, appliances from companies like Coradiant promise to collect data from client devices without installing an agent.

"Management vendors offer passive, server-side monitoring and active testing to avoid putting agents on devices," says George Hamilton, director of Yankee Group's enabling-technologies enterprise group. "Because endpoints are changing to include handheld devices, vendors know that an agent on each device is not feasible in the long term, so some vendors like Intel are embedding remote monitoring into the hardware."

Others point out that as operating systems mature, more capabilities will be embedded there to enable management without installing agents. In addition, management vendors continue to work toward standardising agents across their products.

"The solution we see in the long run is that, through commoditisation of chips and operating systems, agent functions will end up embedded in the operating system," says Jean-Pierre Garbani, a vice president with Forrester Research. And until then, "a universal agent architecture with a standard interface would be a good start," he says.

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