SilverBack Aids Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance

Called the SOX Readiness Toolkit, the suite complements current SilverBack reports that automate documentation of compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley. SilverBack said it plans to introduce the new toolkit this week at its annual partner conference in Burlington, Mass.

The SOX Readiness Toolkit aids solution providers in helping customers address requirements in Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404, which calls for businesses to use third-party organizations to implement technology changes to achieve a corporate-control framework, said Christine Washburn, vice president of marketing at Billerica, Mass.-based SilverBack.

"The biggest piece is that because auditors cannot implement a lot of these services, it has to go to a third party," Washburn said. "Who better than someone who already does that for a living? [Compliance] is a perfect fit for MSPs."

The toolkit provides a centralized console view of a company's infrastructure and offers documentation of security controls, continuous availability of archived documents and aggregated firewall reports. It also gives a combined view of network activity and security devices so users can distinguish between attacks and legitimate increases in network traffic.

Several SilverBack solution providers said the toolkit provides them with a vehicle to draw up an IT controls map for a customer and then propose services and solutions beyond simple auditing and monitoring. Al Gossett, president of Digital-DNS, a Greenville, S.C.-based solution provider, said he already has built an entire marketing campaign around the toolkit and its service opportunities. The brand name for the service: Stress-Free IT.

"Once we're in [a client's network], it's not hard to find other pain points we can fix," Gossett said. "It's amazing how many decent-size companies have spent millions on a big network management system but don't know how to use it for what they need."

Pricing for the SOX Readiness Toolkit wasn't available at press time. SilverBack's partner conference runs until Aug. 5.