Information Security & SearchSecurity.com Products of the year 2006
Methodology:
Choosing Our 2006 Products of the Year
Information Security and SearchSecurity.com presented 890 readers with a survey of more than 300 security products, divided into 12 categories. Respondents were asked to select the products in each category that they use and had the option of specifying products that did not appear on the list. (The categories and product lists were determined by Information Security and SearchSecurity.com editors.) Respondents were asked to rate each product in six areas: overall quality, performance, features, security, documentation and vendor support/service.
In each area, respondents scored the product on a scale of one (poor) to five (excellent). They also had the ability to opt out of scoring in one or more criteria by indicating that they had "no opinion."
Winners were based on cumulative responses for the six criteria. Editors arrived at a product's overall score by calculating the average number of points it received in all of the evaluation areas. In each category, the highest overall score received the gold medal, the next highest earned the silver medal, and the third highest took the bronze medal.
To prevent products that received a small number of high scores from unduly influencing the results, we instituted a vote qualification minimum: In order to be eligible for award consideration, a product had to be among the top five vote getters in its category.
The three finalists in each category represent the top scores from the top five vote-getters. The gold medal winner received the highest score among the three finalists.
The gold medal winner also had to get at least 25 percent of the total votes.
Emerging Technologies awards were determined by Information Security and SearchSecurity.com editors, who chose three innovative technologies that promise to address a critical security need for enterprises and/or SMBs.
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