16 Endpoint Security and Compliance Management Design Guide Using IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager
1.4 Endpoint security and compliance management
Organizations can have few or as many as several hundreds of thousands of
endpoints that must be tightly controlled to effectively manage risk. In
far-reaching environments, the numbers and varieties of servers, desktops,
notebooks, mobile IT devices, and specialized equipment, such as point-of-sale
devices, ATMs, and self-service kiosks, which are known collectively as
endpoints, are growing at unprecedented rates. With rapidly increasing numbers
of remote workers and roaming devices, there is no well-defined perimeter
anymore. The perimeter, by necessity, must be the endpoint itself.
The pains caused by security and compliance issues, however, are not only in
the attacks, but also in the way that organizations protect themselves. Protection
can be costly, complex, and time-consuming, stretching IT staff thin and driving
costs even higher. After security is in place, many organizations must prove
compliance with internal policies, security standards, and government
regulations. In addition to the pain involved in achieving initial compliance,
compliance drift is another key concern. After compliance levels are attained,
organizations must ensure that the compliance levels are continuously
maintained.
Controlling costs is high on the priorities of IT leaders, affecting IT teams that are
being asked to do more with less. Organizations require a tool that is simple and
scalable. The tool must automate management capabilities so that costs and
complexity are controlled, while still being able to meet compliance mandates.
The Tivoli Endpoint Manager Agent constantly monitors endpoint compliance,
communicating endpoint status and providing real-time visibility through a single,
centralized console. And by using a continually updated policy database of
thousands of IBM Fixlet® messages, and providing the ability for clients to create
their own Fixlets, the Tivoli Endpoint Manager Server always contains current
endpoint compliance, configuration, and change status, enabling real-time
reporting. Reporting through a centralized console provides real-time visibility
into the configuration and compliance status in various easy-to-understand
reports.
Chapter 1. Business context for endpoint security and compliance management 17
Managing compliance can be seen as operating in accordance with
expectations. These expectations are formalized from mission statements and
requirements that are derived from external laws and regulations, such as the
following examples:
򐂰 Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
򐂰 ISO 27001/27002
򐂰 Sarbanes-Oxley
򐂰 Basel II
򐂰 Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
򐂰 NERC-CIP
򐂰 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA)
򐂰 Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)
򐂰 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)
Addressing these challenges requires a flexible, cross-platform approach that
provides the visibility of all of the IT endpoints of the organization and also the
control to manage the configuration. Continually enforcing the configuration of
endpoints helps to reach a compliant state and therefore satisfies the
stakeholders in an organization.
Audit reports help document the level of compliance to any internal policy,
external regulation, or applicable law. The mandate to produce these reports can
be a time-consuming process. Considering the management of endpoints starts
with managing the configuration of these endpoints. Enforcing the configuration
for a particular endpoint requires an intelligent agent to be deployed that
constantly evaluates the state of these settings. The unified Agent deployed with
Tivoli Endpoint Manager can identify current patch and configuration levels,
comparing them against defined policies. It can then apply operating system and
application updates, regardless of the endpoint location, connection type, or
status, and continuously enforce policy compliance, even if endpoints are not
connected to the network at all times.

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