ISS Adds To Services Offerings

ISS' new service includes a five-step assessment of how a company's existing security technology correlates to different government and industry requirements, said Peter Privateer, senior vice president of marketing at the Atlanta-based vendor.

The regulations covered by the new service include HIPAA, which sets privacy and disclosure parameters for patient data; Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which focuses on financial services firms; and Sarbanes-Oxley, a broad series of accounting oversight guidelines.

The company will offer compliance advisers for those regulations as well as for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, which pertains mainly to power plants, oil refineries and other utilities; and California Senate Bill No. 1386, which requires any company with offices in the state to disclose security breaches.

ISS expects to offer the service on its own as well as with some of its smaller business partners that don't have staff resources to address these issues themselves, Privateer said.

Robert Cohen, president and CEO of CG Atlantic, a systems integrator based in New York, said corporate governance is definitely a hot button for many of his financial services customers. However, he expects many of these companies will rely on larger systems integrators for related business process advice coupled with the security-specific information CG Atlantic can offer.

ISS also Monday introduced a new series of maintenance and support services. The company will now offer three tiers of support: Standard, Select and Premium. Previously, ISS offered support on a more ad hoc basis, Privateer said.

Under the Standard service, customers will have access to 24x7 telephone technical support plus X-Press Update product enhancements, among other things. The Select offering includes direct access to support engineers and priority response to incidents as key benefits. And the Premium tier includes designated technical account managers, highest priority response to incidents, two on-site security reviews per year, and credit toward X-Force Professional Security Services and Education.

"Most of the time, we are providing tier-one support even if the channel sold the product," Privateer said.