"I have a dedicated monitor on my desk, so I can see the state of our network security at any given point in time," Kadel says. "It has given us greater visibility and better reaction time."

Some software vendors sell products called dashboards that are in fact just central management consoles for particular security products. But that doesn't mean that such products aren't helpful.

For example, New York Community Bank uses CA Inc.'s Integrated Threat Management R8. ITM unifies CA's PestPatrol Anti-Spyware Corporate Edition and its antivirus software into a single console. The bank uses ITM to centrally manage 3,500 desktops at 170 branches in the greater New York area, as well as its servers. With ITM, help desk staffers can remotely scan the workstations rather than having to travel to a site and do it manually.

"Each branch has its own server and PCs," says Assistant Vice President Dan Koppelman. "It has saved us a lot of time and costs, not having to keep IT staff on the road going from PC to PC."

But unlike nFX, such a console can't be considered a true security dashboard.