Assurent Vulnerability Research Selected as Primary Test Source by NSS Group Labs; Partnership Between Assurent and the NSS Group Will Benefit Security Product Vendors and Enterprise Customers.

TORONTO -- Assurent Secure Technologies, the premier provider of vulnerability research for security product vendors, and the NSS Group, the world's leading public test and certification facility, are pleased to announce that, effective January 1st, 2006, the NSS Group will use Assurent's Vulnerability Research Service (VRS), signature feeds and Spyware Research Service as the primary set of threat data for its security product testing. NSS provides public testing and certification of Intrusion Prevention systems (IPS), firewalls and other security products. Assurent provides vulnerability and spyware research and related development services to security product vendors worldwide.

Roger Mahabir, Assurent's Chairman, stated that "We are delighted to be working with NSS Group, the premier public security product testing and certification lab. We're also very pleased that the NSS Group has recognized the unique value of the Assurent Vulnerability Research team's work. It's a vote of confidence in our ongoing work to develop timely, highly detailed analysis of the most significant vulnerabilities that target medium and large enterprise IT users."

Bob Walder, NSS Group Director, stated that "The core business of The NSS Group is security testing and certification. As part of our extensive test suites, it is necessary to develop a high quality library of current exploits, and we found that a disproportionate amount of our time was spent maintaining and extending that library. We have been searching for quite some time for a partner capable of meeting our extremely high standards in terms of vulnerability research and exploit production, and we were delighted to forge this partnership with what we believe to be one of the leading companies in its field. From the outset, we were impressed with the quality and scope of Assurent's work, and we are looking forward to a fruitful working relationship."

Assurent vulnerability research is currently used as the standard for product development by over 20 of the world's leading IT security product vendors and test facilities, as well as global software vendors. Assurent's unique research also powers the Assurent Threat Protection Program that is used by Fortune 500 enterprise security teams to prioritize and respond to breaking new security vulnerabilities in their environments. From its Toronto head office, Assurent's vulnerability and spyware research teams serve customers in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia.

About Assurent Secure Technologies

Assurent provides IT security research and consulting services to security product companies and Fortune 500 enterprise customers. The company operates the world's leading security vulnerability research lab and has specialized capabilities in secure software development, vulnerability research and analysis, IPS/IDS signature development, spyware research, product security testing and mobile & wireless security.

Further information on Assurent's vulnerability research services for security product vendors and the Assurent Threat Protection Program for enterprise security teams is available on the Assurent web site at http://www.assurent.com

About the NSS Group Ltd.

The NSS Group is the world's foremost independent security testing facility. With headquarters in the UK and testing facilities in the South of France, NSS provides testing and certification for vendors, end users, certification bodies and currently, provides evaluation and certification for a wide range of security products including: IDS/IPS appliances, firewalls, VPN's, multi-function security appliances, cryptographic devices and PKI products.

Output from NSS labs including detailed research reports, articles and white papers on the latest network and security technologies are available on the NSS web site at http://www.nss.co.uk.