Kacin Point

Unified management console consolidates your company's security efforts

Stand-alone products that help control and manage desktops, laptops and servers on your network (plus all those Blackberries, cell phones and other mobile network-ready devices) are all well and good. But having a bunch of management products can be a pain--especially with growing concerns about end point vulnerabilities and security. A unified management console (UMC) can alleviate these issues by giving IT managers a comprehensive view of their entire network and the condition and security status of networked devices, all at once.

UMCs do away with the need for multiple management access points, making it easier to deploy, configure and manage your security efforts across the network. UMCs enable IT admins to see and gain access to the entire network landscape from one place, allowing easier and more effective management of all networked devices. They help reduce overall costs of these tasks by allowing IT staff to perform them from one place, improving overall manageability and end point security. UMCs also make it simpler to integrate security tools from multiple vendors.

Reporting is another big pain that a UMC can help alleviate. With a UMC, network-level and end-point-level policies and reports are performed in the same context, allowing a real-time, top-to-bottom picture of the network. At KACE, we wanted to bring these benefits to our customers in an affordable, easy-to-use appliance, so we developed KBOX 1000 Series Systems Management Appliances with the KBOX Management Center.

The KBOX Management Center is a Web-based unified management console that enables all administrative functions from any network-allowable location, and when used with KBOX Security Audit and Enforcement Module, it manages 3rd-party security software and solutions. With KBOX 1000 appliances, IT staff can find and remediate problems quickly, reducing the time have to they spend finding and fixing security vulnerabilities, and allowing them to redirect their efforts toward strategic IT initiatives that boost your company’s ability to move forward.

Security patches can only do so much

We hear this over and over again, but today, we are reminded again that you can't just identify a security problem—you have to actually deploy the fix. “Big Yellow”, a worm first identified and patched in May 2006, is wrecking havoc today on more than 60,000 computer systems. According to eEye Digital Security (the company that first discovered Big Yellow), the worm targets everything from antivirus software to media applications—in other words everything on your corporate network. And it’s those unknown apps running within your network that your IT department hasn’t authorized that will punch the biggest holes in your security efforts.

Given the potentially high costs of business disruption security management is something that everyone should take very seriously and think through. And it’s becoming harder to keep making “we can’t afford enterprise-grade IT management software” the excuse.  As InfoWorld said this week in a review of top products in 2006: “KACE packs enterprise-class Windows management into an SMB package,” making it easier for mid-market companies to put comprehensive management functionality to use in their networks.

If you are a mid-market organization, it’s more than worth it to check out some of the patch management and software distribution products out on the market right now. Your best bet is to look for a product that can identify all software on your network and then help your organization keep all those applications up to date – as well as removing any that aren’t authorized. With KACE, keeping your organization safe from needless security risks isn’t as hard as it used to be.

Thinking about Vista for security? Think again

The number of zero-day security flaws coming from Microsoft have been staggering lately. Probably not the press they needed leading up to the launch of Vista for businesses.

There are some rumblings that Vista will have improved manageability features. We don't know a lot about these yet, but we do know that responsible organizations don't focus just on perimeter security, but also end point security. This means you have to coordinate between security and systems management.

With more employees connecting devices to the corporate network such as PDAs and cell phones, security risks are as prevalent as ever. In a recent white paper, we offered up 5 tips for ways to tie together systems management and your security efforts.

You should note we don’t list "Buy Vista" among our suggestions.