e-Security, maker of security-event manager Sentinel, is shipping a series of new preconfigured, automated applications designed to allow customers to meet compliance regulations quickly and easily.
The Sentinel Control Packs are distributed for most widely used operating systems on servers and mainframes, and is designed so that IT staffers can perform the installation quickly and without the assistance of consultants or company engineers.
Each Control Packs package contains prebuilt and tested agents, predesigned correlation rules, resolution templates, and reports designed to be used in conjunction with compliance audits.
According to chief technology officer Reed Harrison, the Control Packs can detect what type of compliance is necessary and install the proper agents, correlation rules and reports.
“It’s a natural evolution for the security-event management space,” explained Harrison. “We’re building stronger tools on the back side of our product where customers will find more value,” he said. “Control Packs will allow us to bundle agents for authentication events. They have taxonomy for different regulatory requirements built in.”
According to Harrison, a key factor for customers is the ease and speed with which the Control Packs can be implemented. “A quicker time to value comes from a control pack that gives a push-button install and you’re up and running,” Harrison said.
One feature of Vienna, Va.-based e-Security Inc.’s Control Packs is that the same pack can detect if the organization needs to meet multiple regulations and can set itself up accordingly. He pointed out that a health care company may need to comply with both Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, for example. “Having the data prestructured so that these are all built into the record [means] they can all be used for the reporting requirements,” he said.
“It hits a market need,” said George Hamilton, Senior Analyst at the Yankee Group in Boston. “You’re seeing a lot of noise in this space by every SEM and SIM out there,” Hamilton said; “Everybody has a compliance story.” He said that e-Security’s solution is not like the others: “The difference with e-security is that it makes it easier for a business to get started,” he said. “Theirs is really on a more proactive end.”
Hamilton noted that while there are any number of products that handle part of the compliance-monitoring process, the Control Packs reaches a new level. “It’s the only one of its kind right now,” Hamilton said. “It can really determine whether the device is associated with a particular regulation, and it can install and configure itself to capture the right data.”
Hamilton said that because the e-Security solution combines monitoring, management and remediation, as well as integrating into most work flow and help desk solutions, it’ll be good for the long haul.
“Compliance is driving everything on the security-management side. It needs to be part of IT management,” he said. “All that business-level stuff is where the value is, and e-Security is the first one to have a practical solution that you can deploy today.”
Harrison said that despite its ease of implementation, the biggest need for the Control Packs is speed, because compliance can be time critical. “The key value this brings to the market is that this needs to get easier to do, to get the value there quicker and easier,” Harrison said. “The compliance market is driving this because of the urgency and because of deadlines, or because audits have failed.”
Harrison said that e-Security will be adding greater depth of support for the compliance Control Pack, starting with Linux support due in the very near future. He said that will be followed by access-control compliance. “The technology should get easier over time,” he said.
