HP OpenView Tightens Compliance

By Salvatore Cangeloso

In advance of the RSA Conference next week in San Jose, Calif., HP announced upgrades to its OpenView suite of enterprise management software.

The suite allows for detailed recording of user access permissions, which is a must for proper governance of a company’s IT activities in the age of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

OpenView Select Audit, due some time in May, facilitates the automation of enterprise auditing and compliance regulation.

It features HP Labs’ visual control modeling framework, reporting packages, which are compliant with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, and a tamper-resistant audit system, which is protected by digital signature.

This audit system tracks administrative actions, changes to user accounts, access requests, and authorizations. The product allows for the centralization of system controls through integration with HP’s OpenView Select Access, Select Federation, and Select Identity.

OpenView Select Identity 4.0, expected in March, improves upon the automation of compliance processing and change management. These can be use to update dynamically to changed in IT infrastructure, such as when systems are added, removed or upgraded from the existing network.

It will also allow for the separation and centralization of administrative privileges when needed.

These upgrades have been implemented in order to lower risk during changes and safeguard against system adjustments, which are not in accordance with set control processes.

“By reducing the complexity of the entire audit lifecycle, customers can more quickly align their IT controls and processes with the requirements tied to the higher level business and regulatory policies,” Todd DeLaughter, vice president and general manager of the OpenView business unit, said in a statement.

Data that concerns a company’s processing and ultimate reporting of financial activity is oftentimes heavily automated and controlled by the IT department. For this reason the IT system must be closely tracked and audited.

In addition to legal concerns OpenView and its competitors are used to promoting efficient network management.

Roberta Witty, vice president of research at Gartner, stressed the importance of user-provisioning tools, such as OpenView, for their reporting capabilities, which will quickly and cheaply consolidate information on such details as who has access to given information.

When the OpenView suite is used with an existing IT infrastructure, it is designed to centralize system management and reduce the cost associated with network control.

Its automated processes, such as Smart Action, and simplification of tasks, such as password updating and user-profile adjustments, are an important part of this software’s functionality. The centralization and automating of management activities is a major goal for HP.

These changes are intended to push auditing as a “service, not a feature” Sai Allavarpu, HP’s director of project management and marketing, told internetnews.com.

The OpenView suite can be licensed as a complete suite or sold individually, according to HP. The suite runs at about $39 per internal user, though it will be subject to change depending on volume and if licenses are needed for external users.

The point products will be available individually for customers who do not require the entire suite.