For Immediate Release

 

Ecora Introduces Newest Version of Auditor Professional
with Expanded Enterprise Capabilities

Latest Version Provides Increased Compliance
Analysis and Data Collection

Portsmouth, N.H. – January 28, 2008 – Ecora Software, the market-proven leader for configuration audit and analytics solutions, today announced the availability of version 4.5 of its Ecora Auditor Professional™. Auditor Professional is designed to reduce the high cost of compliance mandates, lower costs by minimizing downtime, increase overall security, and improve the operational efficiency of IT professionals. Auditor Professional 4.5 discovers, collects, analyzes and reports on configuration data from your infrastructure and delivers immediate value by leveraging pre-defined policies and rich report templates to provide the foundation for effective change and configuration management. Created to ensure that companies are prepared for any IT audit scenario, version 4.5 takes the cost and complexity out of compliance audits while providing IT professionals with a comprehensive and flexible solution to help deliver higher levels of security, reliability, and availability

Auditor Professional 4.5 contains new capabilities and critical updates in several key areas including:

Compliance:

• Ecora Compliance Center: Combines policy-based dashboard and web-based reporting capabilities into a streamlined, intuitive interface allowing consumers of compliance information (CISO, CIO, auditors, change and security managers) to keep their finger on the pulse of an organization's compliance standing with customizable dashboards and compliance trend information.
• Compliance Reports: Ecora has improved upon its hundreds of out-of-the-box reports for IT best practice and regulatory reporting with improved readability, enhanced content, and a more professional look that will add greater understanding for technical and non-technical users.

Data Collection:

• Agent or Agentless Data Collection: Auditor Pro 4.5 provides users with the option of deploying agents on targeted systems, collecting information agentlessly, or employing both collection methods without compromising the depth of information collected or level of reporting capability. These new collection options allow IT managers the flexibility necessary to ensure they can audit and analyze all aspects of their enterprise, including those systems located in a DMZ.
• Customized data collection: Auditor Pro 4.5 allows users to easily configure collections to target specific data. Whether you want to set this manually, or let Auditor use a report to decide what to collect, you'll have more control than ever before.
• Added support for Cisco ASA, Z-Linux, Centos and Oracle Enterprise Linux in addition to refreshes of the 18 platforms currently supported.

Enterprise Support:

• Help desk and asset database integration: As IT assets expand, the challenge of keeping accurate information of what's where and what's changing gets harder every day. With out-of-the-box integration with BMC Remedy 6 and HP Service Desk 4.5, Auditor Professional can keep your staff informed of changes that may not have been planned and keep your configuration and asset databases up to date with updated configuration information directly from your systems.

“The road to long-term value in a systems management solution is paved with increased viability through product improvements and strategic integrations. With the release of Auditor Pro 4.5, Ecora has provided both functional enhancements and integrations with vendors such as HP and BMC, expanding its functionality for existing customers and increasing its attractiveness to a broader audience," said Steve Brasen, a systems management analyst with Enterprise Management Associates. "Ecora's appeal now further extends to larger enterprises that can leverage its powerful reporting and compliance capabilities without conflicting with already established in-house tools.”

Because today's global business environments require around-the-clock system availability that extends far beyond the traditional data center, IT managers must have a clear view of what is transpiring in the enterprise at all times or face unplanned downtime, potential security exploits, and failed compliance audits. 2008 is shaping up to be a year filled with challenges for IT departments; from emerging compliance issues to the adoption of new environments such as Microsoft Vista and Exchange 2007, IT managers will face several critical hurdles in keeping control of their infrastructure. Auditor Professional 4.5 provides automated configuration audit and analytics solutions to customers worldwide, ensuring that the IT infrastructure remains operationally effective, secure and compliant.

“Data center complexity and the burden of managing compliance initiatives continue to remain among the top concerns listed in every survey of IT professionals I've seen,” says John Walsh, Senior Vice President of Engineering, Ecora. “Auditor Professional 4.5 will allow IT managers to cut through the clutter and complexity of their network infrastructure and extract the information they need clearly, timely and concisely to effectively manage their environment without having to sift through volumes of useless data.”

About Auditor Professional

Ecora's Auditor Pro delivers immediate value by leveraging pre-defined policies and rich report templates to provide the foundation for effective change and configuration management. Auditor Pro has distinguished itself in the marketplace by delivering exceptional value in each of the five core competencies required for an effective configuration audit and analytics solution: Discovery, Collection, Analysis, Reporting, and Closed-Loop Change Validation.

Discovery:

Auditor Pro is able to automatically discover systems throughout the enterprise using IP discovery, Active Directory and other methods to ensure you have an accurate audit of the configuration of your environment.

Collection:

Auditor Pro collects asset, security and configuration settings from operating systems, databases, applications, firewalls and network devices, without deploying agents on target systems or compromising the depth of information collected.

Analysis:

Using Ecora's rules-driven Policy Dashboard, IT Managers are able to quickly compare policies and rules based on established internal standards and external regulatory requirements against actual system configurations.

Reporting:

Ecora has developed thousands of audit-proven, pre-installed report templates to test and validate that system controls are configured correctly. These reports can be generated and viewed through Auditor Pro's web-based Reporting Center and are invaluable for performing a pre-audit of your environment prior to an audit, then, after addressing any deficiencies, generate updated reports as auditable evidence validating your controls.

Closed-Loop Change Validation:

Auditor Pro can provide system-based validation that authorized changes have been completed and provide actionable information to remediate unauthorized or undesired configuration changes. This assessment remediation process can be further automated by using Auditor Pro's integration with leading service and help desk tools to create a trouble ticket when changes outside of accepted standards are identified.

Availability

Ecora's Auditor Professional 4.5 is available beginning January 31, 2008. For more information and current pricing, contact Ecora by phone at 877-92ecora (923-2672) or by emailing sales@ecora.com. A trial evaluation of Auditor Professional can be requested on www.ecora.com.

About Ecora Software

Ecora Software is the market-proven leader for Configuration Audit and Analytics solutions that allow a proactive view of the IT infrastructure and deliver actionable evidence ensuring critical business services remain operationally effective, secure, and compliant with internal standards and external regulations. Auditor ProfessionalT offers immediate value with its agentless architecture matched with rich report templates and pre-defined policies providing the foundation for effective change and configuration management. Please visit us at www.ecora.com