Consul risk management, a renowned expert in enterprise security audit and compliance solutions, today announced the launch of its Basel II Regulatory Compliance Management Module (Basel II Module) for its flagship product Consul InSight Security Manager (InSight).
InSight enables security audit and compliance management by: viewing the activities of both "trusted" users and intruders; monitoring technologies, including security devices, applications, databases, operating systems; and incorporating the generation and enforcement of security policies. The Basel II Module is the latest addition to a family of Regulatory Compliance Management Modules which include: ISO 17799, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA.
Compliance with Basel II involves measuring many risk factors, including credit, market and operational risks, with anticipated positive effects on reliability and the public image of banks and insurance firms. Under Basel II, financial institutions are required to establish capital reserves of between 8 and 18 percent for unforeseen risks. Institutions that approach operational risk management using the Advanced Measurement Approach (AMA) are allowed to maintain smaller capital reserves, a clear business advantage specifically when the majority of executives expect the business costs of regulation to rise over the next few years, becoming a significant threat to business.
Measuring and reporting on IT security is key to meeting the AMA. The Basel II Module measures and reports on the interaction of the key aspects of operational risk - people, information, systems and processes. Acting like a security auditor, the Basel II Module delivers regulation-specific, out-of-the-box policy templates, a dashboard and dozens of reports specifically tailored for security auditing and management activities vital to compliance with Basel II.
"Basel II aims to reward best-practice risk management as a means of compliance. Consul InSight is one of the industry's first solutions addressing the intersection of audit and policy compliance efforts with information security and operational risk. Consul offers countless organizations an indispensable, solid base for auditing internal activities and compliance initiatives," said Joseph Sander, CEO of Consul. "With the Basel II Regulatory Compliance Module, users can employ our proven, user-friendly technology to dramatically reduce the time, people and financial investment required to achieve compliance and enable security best practices."