Promisec Launches Midmarket Assessment Management Tool

Known as PAM, the new assessment tool allows administrators and partners to take a comprehensive look at customer's software and hardware assets, as well as applications, in order to determine the risk they present to the company's sensitive data and intellectual property.

Subsequently, the tool enables partners to report exactly what software employees are using while reducing the risk of unauthorized software or unapproved hardware being introduced into the network.

"What applications do I really want out there? Do I want to have something like Skype installed? I have to understand the inherent risks," said Alan Komet, vice president of Promisec. "It also leads us to research and a better view of those applications which could be bad today."

The new assessment tool is aimed squarely at the midmarket -- under 1,000 endpoints or hosts -- a market segment that has valuable data and assets but not necessarily the resources to install enterprise level assessment and management software, partners say.

"It's having the ability to bring enterprise product into the midmarket," said Jeb Carter, president of managed services and IT consulting VAR DefenderSoft, based in Dallas. "Not only are they delivering a product that's really helpful, they're helping us deliver it to our end users in an affordable manner."

One of the biggest selling points, partners say, is that the solution is completely clientless, and is capable of inspecting the PC network with comprehensive audits in a matter of minutes.

"Really the big thing with Promisec is that it's agentless," said Carter. "We're not encroaching into someone's environment to provide security. That's a big plus for us."

Altogether, the new solution provides user-friendly information at a glance to help plan for future system deployments, troubleshoot or accurately budget for software upgrades or licensing compliance.

For partners, Promisec's new assessment solution provides an additional tool that they can offer their customers for assessing and categorizing valuable information in order to secure it from malware distributed by malicious applications. That functionality is especially valuable in a security environment in which attacks are increasingly targeting corporate assets and intellectual property, partners say.

Meanwhile, to assist partners with assessment and scanning services, Promisec launched a risk center entirely devoted to internal threats, equipped with analysis tools that cull applications to determine the severity of the threat level.

"We can report back to you the deviations. That's a huge step on the research side," said Komet. "Today's partners don't have anywhere to turn to get that information and they're not doing that on their own."

Above all, Carter said that he appreciated the high visibility coupled with elevated control -- functions which he said amounted to "pulling back the curtain."

"Just being able to manage it, monitor, see what's going on in our environment, having a real quick heads up as to what's going on in your environment and having the ability to fix it right away," he said. "We're giving you that visual and then we're giving you control over how you want to handle it."