Basel-II News

IBM Helps Business Partners Strengthen Client Infrastructures for Looming Government Regulations

(May 07, 2007)--IBM announced a suite of software solutions to support IBM Business Partners in delivering the industry's broadest portfolio of solutions for today's growing compliance management market.

Compliance requirements can be driven by government regulations, industry guidelines, business commitments or even internally driven governance initiatives. Controls to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of customer data and applications are frequently a key part of compliance initiatives and must be aimed at prevalent threats. IBM's Service Management offerings have a strong suite of compliance solutions that help to automate IT controls and then report on the effectiveness of these controls to support compliance initiatives.

IBM is arming its partners with the tools required to better address their customers' compliance initiatives. With its recent acquisitions of Consul and Internet Security Systems (ISS), IBM is now able to offer the largest breadth of both internal and external security management in the industry today. Instead of taking point products to market that address isolated needs, this new program will help IBM partners address their customers' needs for a complete compliance management lifecycle.

The program will tie together key steps for partners to create a compliance plan, including collecting information; analyzing this information and its risks; making policy decisions; creating procedures and control decisions based on the policy; and testing those controls to determine the outcomes against policy, including compliance measures. It will then help partners link to the appropriate IBM technology solution.

Business partners will be able to leverage these tools to help clients determine where to focus their efforts first, starting simply and then growing their compliance management program to suit their enterprise objectives. Starting points will vary based on the risks and vulnerabilities in the enterprise today. Starting points that business partners can address with the IBM compliance portfolio include:

-- Identity management: helping maximize the effectiveness and efficiency
of internal controls for provisioning, enforcing, managing and auditing
user access to IT systems.
-- Vulnerability management: by monitoring system compliance to
configuration policy, helping minimize technical risk factors such as
security threats.
-- Security information and event management: help effectively and
efficiently monitor the health of the security environment, monitor and
enforce security policies, and detect and respond to security related
incidents.
-- Threat management: aggregation, correlation, real-time threat and
incident handling, security operations centers dashboard and operational
reports for ISS or external security management solutions such as Symantec
or Cisco.
-- Log management and compliance reporting: demonstrating the
effectiveness of IT controls relative to compliance initiatives such as ISO
17799, SOX, HIPAA, Basel II, etc.

With new and updated education and enablement material as well as co-marketing materials, technical collateral and demos, IBM business partners will have the tools at their fingertips to better understand their clients' compliance requirements, determine where to start first and identify the IBM offerings that best suit their clients' objectives. With a broad portfolio that addresses implementing IT controls as well as reporting on their effectiveness, the partner is well equipped to offer clients solutions for any phase of the compliance management process.

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