New offerings could improve firms' compliance efforts

CA has added a new module to its CA Clarity Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) tool range, designed to make it easier for firms to manage governance, risk and compliance (GRC).

Gregor Petri, CA’s European director of product marketing, said the CA GRC manager allows organisations to manage compliance with 280 industry regulations through a standard framework.

A company could therefore automatically comply with such requirements as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and Cobit, said CA.

The standard framework ensures “companies know what to do and how to do it”, Petri said. Once a company implements the framework, it will no longer have to repeat certain processes, such as the back-up of data and creating an audit trail, he added.

As well as enabling organisations to cope with increasing regulatory pressures, the new CA clarity tool reduces business costs, for example spending on auditors, said Petri.

CA GRC Manager also contains IT control automation tools, which mechanise security, information and change, Petri said. Security policies and regulations particular to a company such as security and access management, are embedded into the project management tool, which is then programmed to automatically check the security of the system regularly and log the success of the report, he added.

“It takes all the donkey work out of the regulation,” Petri said.

Organisations can adapt the framework to fit their regulation needs. CA works with a number of channel partners to configure the product, Petri said.

CA has also announced the beta release of CA Security Vulnerability Manager (CA SVM), which is designed to help organisations identify vulnerabilities in software and configuration settings.