In-Depth

Briefs: Tripwire compliance monitoring; security appliance sales up, prices down

Tripwire introduces its Professional Audit Preparedness Services; what's behind falling appliance prices?

• By Mathew Schwartz
• 07/02/2003

Conducting audits to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or a number of other government regulations can be resource intensive, error prone, and just plain tedious. Yet such audits, legally speaking, are mandatory.

“Reporting on the system of internal controls is required for almost any organization seeking to meet regulatory compliance, including the Section 404 requirements for Sarbanes-Oxley,” says Gene Kim, chief technology officer of Tripwire Inc. in Portland, Ore. “In the domain of IT computer operational controls, assurance hinges upon the integrity of the critical underlying IT change and configuration management processes.”

To help companies monitor and report on the effectives of their security, change control, operational assurance and service-level process controls, the company introduced Tripwire Professional Audit Preparedness Services. Through a combination of Tripwire audit preparedness software and services, organizations can monitor for compliance and initiate corrective actions wherever necessary to ensure continued compliance with government regulations.

For more information, see www.tripwire.com.

Worldwide Security Appliance Revenues Decline, Shipments Increase

For the first quarter of this year, factory revenues for the security appliance market hit $316 million, off slightly from a year before, says International Data Corp. (IDC) in Framingham, Mass. Despite declining revenues declining, shipments actually increased by almost a fifth.

“The decline in vendor revenue and the increase in total shipments is the result of a number of factors—increased deployment of devices for branch and remote offices, increased price pressure throughout the market coupled with a weaker US dollar, and the clearing of inventory in anticipation of the release of new products,” explains Charles Kolodgy, an IDC security research director.

The report also notes the top three security appliance vendors: Cisco, Netscreen, and Nokia. Notably, though Cisco commands one-third of the market, its revenue declined by 20 percent, while the others’ revenue rose.

Another interesting finding was the most popular price point. Leading the pack: security appliances costing between $3,000 and $6,000.