Configuresoft Introduces Configuration Intelligence for Virtualization

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.--Systems management technology innovator Configuresoft, Inc., today delivered the latest phase of its Configuration Intelligence™ platform to manage virtualized environments. Configuration Intelligence for Virtualization enables organizations to lower operating costs, improve IT agility and availability while meeting security and compliance regulations.

Virtualization can help organizations progress to flexible and lower-cost enterprise computing. However, those benefits can cause serious complications for enterprise systems management, security and compliance efforts. Configuresoft’s Configuration Intelligence for Virtualization addresses these virtualization concerns by centralizing and automating the monitoring, managing and auditing of physical (host) and virtual (guest) assets across an organization’s infrastructure. Further it delivers unparalleled visibility, security and control, enabling companies to meet the demands of virtualized environments.

“As an early adopter of virtualization we have already derived tremendous benefits, but we recognize that the technology poses some serious challenges as well,” said Jim Brice, Director of Distributed Server Solutions, Hewitt Associates (NYSE: HEW). “To safely realize maximum gains as we accelerate our virtualization initiative, it’s important for us to have the same enterprise view of the security posture for virtual machines and their physical hosts. Configuresoft’s Configuration Intelligence technology promises us the tools required to make the most of our virtualization investment.”

According to Gartner, "The security issues related to vulnerability and configuration management get worse, not better, when virtualized. The most significant issues relate to the security "care and feeding" of offline partitions, which are often overlooked, and the ability to assess the configuration of the host OS, internal virtual network and all guest partitions."¹

Virtual Security Posture Dashboards provide instant snapshots of an organization’s security and compliance status. Easy to read graphs indicate which systems are out of compliance, their levels of severity and the inter-relationships between VM hosts and VM guests. These dashboards provide “at a glance” visibility of the virtual environment, enabling rapid identification, prioritization and remediation of security and compliance issues.

“Dependencies between physical servers, operating systems, application and business functions exponentially increase the level of complexity with the introduction of virtualization,” said Dr. Dennis Moreau, CTO of Configuresoft. “This new level of complexity makes visibility into the security of this environment exceptionally hard. Configuration Intelligence provides enterprises with the ability to realize the significant advantages of virtualization without being overwhelmed with security vulnerabilities and compliance concerns.”

Configuration Intelligence for Virtualization delivers unparalleled visibility, security and control to virtualized environments with:

• Secure Collection Architecture – Auto-discovers and collects granular configuration details for VM machines and their hosts.

• Guest/Host Relationship Correlation – Supports management and security compliance of each guest, host and the associated relationships across the entire virtualized landscape.
• Visibility Into Dormant VMs – Assesses the security posture of dormant VMs before they can compromise the integrity of the overall infrastructure.
• Security Hardening and Compliance Toolkits – Provides out-of-the-box templates that address vendor and virtualization best practices, regulatory mandates and security guidelines.
• Holistic Security View of Virtualized Environment – Views hosts and associated guests environments as a single security entity.
• Virtualization Visualization – Includes graphical indicators of non-compliance issues and pending actions across entire virtual environment.
• Patch Assessment, Delivery and Verification – Significantly improves patch rates across the virtualized infrastructure.
• Separation of Duties – Delegates user access to reports and operational actions based on AD rights, roles and responsibilities.

Earlier this year Configuresoft launched its Configuration Intelligence initiative designed to help IT organizations become a more predictive and automated strategic asset. Through powerful correlation and optimization techniques, Configuration Intelligence transforms operational data and organizational behavior into actionable analytics needed to optimize and secure IT investments and services in both the physical and virtual environments.

About Configuresoft

Configuresoft is an innovator in systems management technology, delivering the enterprise Configuration Intelligence™ to effectively and efficiently manage today’s heterogeneous computing infrastructures. Spanning both security and operations, the Company’s configuration management, compliance and remediation products are used by 12 of the world’s 25 largest companies to keep their critical systems properly configured, while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, FISMA, GLBA, Basel II, HIPAA and DISA, and industry standards such as ISO 27001, PCI DSS and Microsoft Security Hardening Guides. To contact Configuresoft, please call (888) U-CONFIG or visit www.configuresoft.com.

1. Gartner, Inc., "Security Considerations and Best Practices for Securing Virtual Machines" by Neil MacDonald, March 6, 2007.

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