Customers that have endpoint security suites would have to wait for their vendors to adopt these new defensive platforms or buy a separate product, which would defeat the purpose of buying a suite in the first place, IBM says.

The software could also provide a way to automate desktop defenses against threats discovered via IBM's X-Force security intelligence service, which reports to customers about new threats it discovers. Rather than just reporting, X-Force could recommend configuration changes that could provisioned within Proventia ESC and pushed to each workstation, IBM says.

Proventia ESC could also identify those machines susceptible to new threats via its ability to gather and analyze near real-time data about endpoint configuration.

Proventia ESC will be available in April and pricing has not been set.