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IBM today announced new software designed to help organizations that are faced with meeting government and industry regulations by enabling them to automate tasks associated with managing, retaining, and securing business information.
Today's announcement builds on IBM's efforts to help companies adopt best-practice standards to transform their business operations. The software not only helps increase business efficiencies so companies can gain deeper insight and predictability on their business information, but also helps address the information requirements of regulations affecting their businesses.
Organizations today are wrestling to find ways to more easily manage their business assets. Information such as documents, e-mails and instant messages need to now be retained, managed, accessed, secured, and searched to bring business value, and help build a technology foundation for compliance.
IDC states that compliance is the number one IT investment focus for organizations in 2004. Additionally, AMR Research indicates that more than $5 billion will be spent on compliance-related activities and IT purchases this year alone.
With today's announcement, IBM is delivering new Content Management, Lotus Workplace, and Tivoli security management software offerings, all designed to help customers address a variety of regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and financial reporting standards:
IBM Content Management for Message Monitoring and Retention: helps manage archival and retention of correspondence subject to government regulations, such as SEC 17a-4 and NASD 3010/3110. Built with the IBM Content Manager portfolio and the Assentor application suite from business partner iLumin Software Services, and with "smart" indexing capabilities and natural language analysis, the solution provides for the surveillance] and archiving of inbound, outbound, and internal email messages. The solution intelligently scans and analyzes electronic messages by identifying and flagging content for further review.
IBM Lotus Workplace for Business Controls and Reporting: is an integrated set of products and services to help companies manage internal controls and data requirements of legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Section 404) of 2002. New enhancements include additional language support for global businesses, enhanced archiving and audit trail capabilities, collaborative capabilities including e-learning and presence awareness, and an improved user interface for easier navigation. The tool allows companies to identify, assign, test, and monitor business controls.
IBM Tivoli Security Compliance Manager: new software that provides automated security policy compliance audits, helping organizations to identify security vulnerabilities and policy violations. Corporate security policies can be created in the software based on corporate security policy or to help address the requirements imposed by regulations, such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or local privacy regulations. Automated scans of servers and PCs check to see if systems comply to policies, then give security officers and compliance auditors detailed information about the security health of their organization. The software can also work in tandem with other Tivoli software to help lessen potential security risks, by revoking user accounts, upgrading software or deploying patches.