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Security Technology and Design

Updated: March 5th, 2008 02:12 PM PDT

Gain Control With Compliance Tools

By Kevin Beaver, CISSP

Are you caught up in the sea of information privacy and security regulations? Or, seemingly as bad, are you swimming in the ocean of vendor compliance products trying to figure out which life raft is best suited to keep your organization afloat? If so, join the crowd — it is growing larger every year.

When it comes to HIPAA, GLBA or the “regulation of the month,” it is one thing to be "compliant," but it is quite another for all your money, time, and effort to be spent wisely to ensure that your business goals are actually being met and properly managed. Applications that automate and ease the pain of security administration can play a large role in this process.

Information security success is directly proportional to the quality of the tools you use. But compliance tools aren't the “compliance in a box” solution that they sometimes appear to be — there are both pros and cons. Here's what you need to know before you spend another dime.

Options and Benefits Abound

Compliance is not a one-time deal — it is a mindset and mode of operation. It is also a matter of balancing what someone else says you have to do with what actually needs to be done inside your business. To keep up with the many compliance updates — from analyzing overall risks to controlling who can do what on the network to rooting out security vulnerabilities on an ongoing basis — you need good tools.

There are hundreds if not thousands of compliance products waiting to help you lock down every nook and cranny of your network. Whether a small non-profit or a global corporation, there is a tool out there for all of your compliance needs:

* Risk analysis tools from vendors such as RiskWatch (www.riskwatch.com) and Relational Security Corp. (www.relsec.com);

* Policy management tools from vendors like SolSoft (www.solsoft.com) and BindView (now Symantec) (www.bindview.com);

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