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Symantec Announces SSCS
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2005-03-16
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Symantec announced today the availability of the Symantec Systems Continuity Service (SSCS), designed to help businesses establish and maintain a more resilient IT infrastructure.
The Systems Continuity Service includes a thorough audit of a company's IT infrastructure to identify security, network and storage risks. Consultants then provide a detailed action list and policy recommendations to help a business protect against and rapidly recover from unforeseen system attacks or disasters, help meet industry and regulatory compliance requirements, and maintain continuous availability of systems and information.
"IT security and operations groups must work together to overcome organizational, process and technology problems," said Mark Nicolett, vice president, Gartner. "The elimination of desktop, server and network vulnerabilities requires a coordinated effort between the IT security and operations groups. An effective vulnerability management program requires defining security configuration policies, evaluating and auditing the environment with respect to those policies, and marshaling resources to fix configuration errors and eliminate their root causes."
Symantec Systems Continuity Service, delivered by qualified Symantec professional services consultants or certified partners, provides companies with a complete risk assessment of the company's hardware, software and operating system infrastructure. The service then assesses the company's readiness to handle security breaches and maintain the availability of systems and data. The assessment provides a detailed software and storage gap analysis indicating the variance between the business' critical needs and their current environments.
In addition, SSCS delivers documentation of the systems procedures and security policies needed to help meet industry and regulatory compliance requirements. The service also delivers a set of customized best practices to bridge the identified gaps in the company's security, systems and storage needs. Leveraging Symantec's expertise in security, systems and storage management, services professionals implementing SSCS recommend software solutions that address the company's targeted needs as identified in the analysis. The overall outcome of the SSCS for a business are greater IT time and cost savings, as well as identified strategies and software tools required to maintain this increased IT efficiency.
"The Symantec System Continuity Service provided invaluable outside perspective and assistance in making a priority list and a realistic timeline to improve our IT tools and processes," said Bruce Brown, vice president, information and technology, The United Way of the Greater Dayton Area, Dayton, Ohio. "The service also helped us understand the breadth and depth of the legal ramifications and regulatory requirements impacting our business. Additionally, Symantec's expertise in selecting the correct software products to assure simpler and more effective ongoing compliance was very helpful."
To aid in prioritization, SSCS analyzes each organization's relative tolerance to downtime as well as the financial impact of disruptions across six dimensions: network security; systems (servers, desktops and laptops); storage; operating systems; and applications and documents. Options are also available for analyzing the organization's risk tolerance in facilities and power.
The SSCS methodology is based on a best practices approach to vulnerability management encompassing four key steps:
-- establishing a baseline discovery to create a business impact and risk analysis;
-- prioritization of risks used to define an architecture and recovery strategy;
-- validation, testing and implementation of the recovery plan and;
-- maintenance and continuous improvement.
SSCS specifically helps address regulatory compliance for standards and regulations such as ISO 17799, Sarbanes-Oxley, E-SIGN, FFIEC, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, HIPAA, and more.
"SSCS provides the foundation for Symantec to deliver greater information integrity by ensuring the security and availability of business information," said Dieter Giesbrecht, senior vice president and general manager, enterprise administration, Symantec Corporation. "By addressing the gaps in a company's security, systems and storage, we help them increase the efficiency of their IT operations, lower costs, and reduce disruptions and downtime."
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SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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