Implementation of breach detection systems (BDS) can be a complex process with multiple factors affecting the overall security effectiveness of the solution. These should be considered over the course of the useful life of the solution, and include: 

• Detection rate
• Device stability and reliability

In order to determine the relative security effectiveness of devices on the market and facilitate accurate product comparisons, NSS Labs has developed a unique metric:

Security Effectiveness = Detection Rate x Stability & Reliability

By focusing on overall security effectiveness instead of the detection rate alone, NSS is able to factor in the ease with which defenses can be bypassed, as well as the reliability of the device. Because enterprise users consider effective management to be a critical component of any enterprise security deployment, this also should be factored into total cost of ownership (TCO) and overall product selection. This is outside the scope of this report, however, for more information, refer to the TCO CAR. For a complete view of Security Effectiveness mapped against Value, refer to the Security Value Map (SVM) CAR. As part of the initial BDS test setup devices are configured/tuned as deemed necessary by the vendor. Every effort is made to deploy policies that ensure the optimal combination of security effectiveness and performance, as would be the aim of a typical customer deploying the device in a live network environment. This provides readers with the most useful information on key BDS security effectiveness and performance capabilities based upon their expected usage. This report is part of a series of Comparative Analysis Reports (CAR) on security, performance, total cost of ownership (TCO) and Security Value Map (SVM). In addition, a SVM Toolkit is available to NSS clients that allows for the incorporation of organization-specific costs and requirements to create a completely customized SVM.