Compliance tools: local software companies helping ease the burden of corporate governance.

• Author: Andra, Jacob
• Position: Focus

In the byzantine world of corporate governance, hundreds of software firms have sprouted to streamline and automate various aspects of the process. Three such software firms call Utah home: LANDESK, MasterControl and RizePoint. Each of the three serves a core function distinct from the others. Naturally, they also share considerable overlap.

A caveat: these are complex software systems, each of which offers multiple modules that address discrete corporate governance challenges. In this article, we won't be able to give the comprehensive treatment. At the risk of oversimplification, we will examine three broad domains among many: security management, regulatory compliance and social responsibility.

LANDESK: Security, visibility, automation, control

Headquartered in South Jordan, LANDESK offers a diverse set of corporate governance services. Matt Hooper, LANDESK product evangelist, summarizes the offerings as a "backbone of operations" that allows a chief information officer to "manage assets and IT staff in an automated, scalable fashion." Put more simply, the software allows the person in charge to have a handle on a company's systems.

First, LANDESK allows a company to set its control objectives and have total visibility over the degree to which those objectives are being met. Any data changes are traceable to their source. Workflows are tracked. Through a system of automatic auditing, validating, timestamping and checking, the software compares existing processes against standards and flags any vulnerability or deviation from established procedure.

Second, LANDESK analyzes and prioritizes impact. "Not all vulnerabilities are critical," Hooper explains, adding that a CIO could spend all of her time addressing inconsequential issues at the expense of the truly consequential ones. "It's like looking in a pile of needles for a needle," he adds. "You've got to find the one that has the poison."

Finally, the software provides solutions for patching vulnerabilities. The LANDESK Patch Manager evaluates, tests and applies patches automatically "Remediate thousands of systems with one task," the LANDESK site proclaims. A prominent financial services company vouches for the remediation component. "It saves hundreds of hours of IT time," a spokesperson for the company said in a phone conversation. "The system scans and patches, and our risk team can track it all and evaluate."

MasterControl: Revenue enhancement through compliance management

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