Too Many Regulatory Standards, Only One Tool Please

About every two years, I indulge myself with a new laptop. This time, I waited almost three years and will be retiring my old Dell XPS M1330 for a new Alienware M15x. I wanted raw horsepower for virtual machines in a laptop format and was not as concerned about battery life (since I carry an iPad for notes and email) or weight since I travel with a Targus TSB700 rolling backpack. I started collecting all of the software I needed to rebuild my system and realized I have a quite a few solutions to install in order to meet my day-to-day work requirements. This includes everything from Microsoft Office 2010 and Nero 10, to all the solutions eEye offers and of course, gigabyte upon gigabyte of virtual machine sessions. This made me think about how many of these solutions are now bundles and suites compared to the standalone products of years ago. MS Office 2010 contains all the programs I need from word processing to presentations, and Nero, all the tools I could ever need to create promotional DVDs, website videos, and even system backups. As these tools add more features, they cover additional areas required by me for daily work in lieu of even more and more point solutions. As solutions add more features, consider this example: a recent presales Request For Proposal (RFP) queried all the different regulatory standards and assessment standards we are able to support. These include out-of-the-box assessments, dedicated reports, flexible dashboards and best practices to help automate these processes. After a few minutes of digging around, I compiled this short list (not really short):

• SCAP – Security Content Automation Protocol
• CVE – Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures
• CVSS – Common Vulnerability Scoring System
• OVAL – Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language
• XCCDF – The eXtensible Configuration Checklist Description Format
• CCE – Common Configuration Enumeration
• CPE – Common Platform Enumeration
• STIG – Security Technical Implementation Guides
• IAVA – Information Assurance Vulnerability Alert
• FDCC – Federal Desktop Core Configuration
• USGCB – The United States Government Configuration Baseline
• CIS – The Center for Internet Security
• PCI – Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council
• HIPAA – The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
• GLBA – The Gramm-Leach Bliley Act
• SOX – Sarbanes-Oxley Act
• ITIL –Information Technology Infrastructure Library
• COBiT – Common Objectives for Information and related Technology
• FERC-NERC – Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
• ISO – International Organization for Standardization
• MASS 201 – Commonwealth of Massachusetts 201
• NIST 800-53 – Recommended Security Controls for Federal Information Systems and Organizations
• BugTraq - Bugtraq

I realized after creating the list, that while many vendors offer point solutions for some of these standards and regulations, eEye offers all of these in one solution: Retina. For the same reason we use MS Office as a comprehensive tool for daily operations, Retina provides a single comprehensive tool for unified vulnerability management and meets the most common regulatory standards facing businesses today. Now, if I had to go back and find point solutions for each, my cost would skyrocket and my learning curve would ramp up exponentially. I have seen companies use one solution for PCI and another for Configuration Compliance and Benchmarks (FDCC, CIS, USGCB, etc.). And many use a third solution for internal vulnerability assessment (rarely the same vendor due to cost), a fourth for patch management, and maybe even a fifth for any government requirements like STIGS and IAVAs or special projects. There are many standards out there and so many different requirements, it is no wonder that security costs are rising and users are required to work harder to meet these regulations. To address this problem, eEye can provide a solution to these initiatives in a single tool and lower the cost of ownership. Wouldn’t you benefit from a single tool that can solve these requirements verses the alternatives?