By Barbara DePompa

One of the biggest challenges to creating security technologies that effectively protect against worms, viruses and other malicious code attacks is inadequate independent testing and evaluation, a shortcoming which prompted the federal government last year to create the Cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research Network, called DETER (pronounced with an emphasis on the second syllable).

While it may be hard to believe that there is no adequate, consistent testing when literally hundreds of government-sponsored testbeds abound, industry observers claim security products are most often tested in privately owned research facilities, or through computer simulations that simply don’t compare to "real-world" Internet implementations.

continued at: http://www.gsnmagazine.com/nov_04/deter_program