HP tools audit access management practices

Firm supports enterprise moves away from paper-based complicance systems

HP unveiled new tools to automatically audit firms' IT access and identity management practices, at the RSA conference in San Jose.

The vendor said that after two years of increasingly stringent regulations, companies are beginning to move to more automated compliance systems and away from paper-based ones.

Dave Clarke, head of software pre-sales for HP in the UK, said demand is growing for such tools as firms try to improve the way they use their existing IT infrastructure to reduce compliance costs.

The newly-launched HP OpenView Select Audit joins HP's OpenView identity management portfolio and gives organisations the ability to automatically issue digital signatures to prevent tampering with records covering data access and changes to user accounts.

The new suite also features a dashboard that lets firms link compliance guidelines and IT controls to a reporting engine to generate reports on how they are performing against those guidelines.

The reporting engine includes a report pack to help firm's data access policies comply with the US Sarbanes-Oxley law.

"The pack provides reports on areas such as how the firm controls user access and its process for changing account rights," commented Clarke.

Separately, the vendor unveiled a new version of its Select Identity suite featuring enhanced change management and audit functionality, and announced tighter integration between its OpenView Select Access and Service Desk suites to help firms better automate password management processes.

Oracle, meanwhile, similarly beefed up its identity management tools last week with the launch of Oracle Identity Management 10g Release 3. The company said the new suite would aid firms' compliance efforts and features improved password management functionality and tighter integration with the vendor's business applications.