Symantec compliance tool to play nicer with other products

Symantec Wednesday said a new version of its compliance-process automation software to ship next fall will add a way to identify data assets by accepting feeds through third-party asset-management systems.

The ninth version of its Control Compliance Suite will be sold as a combined agent-based and agentless software product, according to Jitesh Chanchani, director of product management at Symantec's security and compliance management group.

Symantec made the announcement at its annual Vision Conference for enterprise customers and analysts, where it also discussed its storage strategies.

"It will be one converged product" whereas before it was marketed as two, Chanchani notes.

Control Compliance Suite 9.0, available to run on Windows, Linux and Unix servers and desktops, provides risk assessment of operating systems and applications to determine if they adhere to the security best practices determined by the corporation for compliance purposes.

Adding the capability to centrally collect feeds from third-party asset-management systems will assist the Symantec compliance tool in generating reports for auditing purposes, Chanchani says. He didn't name specific third-party asset-management tools but says any that can generate log files will be supported.

Once the Symantec Control Compliance Suite defines deficiencies in computers it's monitoring, it can hand that information off to third-party log and ticketing systems for remediation.

Pricing for Version 9.0, expected to ship later this fall, hasn't been announced.