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ELEMENTAL TO DELIVER HOST-LEVEL ACCESS CONTROLS FOR THE NETWORK ADMISSION CONTROL PROGRAM
Security Compliance Management Provider to Supply Broad Set of Flexible Host Configuration Policies for Layered Security Approach
ORLANDO, Fla. - April 4, 2005 - Elemental Security, Inc.TM , a company pioneering new technology in enterprise information security with its next-generation security compliance management product, today announced that it has joined the Network Admission Control (NAC) program, a Cisco-led industry initiative designed to help prevent malicious attacks by using network infrastructure to enforce security policy compliance on devices attempting to access enterprise networks.
The Elemental Compliance SystemTM is the world's only product that unifies policy management, host configuration and network access control in one seamlessly integrated offering. For the first time, enterprises can easily express cross-platform security policies that affect individual computers and their behavior on the network, gather meaningful up-to-date information to compare to established metrics, and selectively enforce policies across a diverse, dynamic environment.
The Elemental Compliance System integrates with the Cisco Trust Agent (CTA), technology delivered through the NAC program, to allow IT administrators to manage network access by checking a wide array of host policies. The Elemental Compliance System offers a broad set of more than 1,400 host configuration rules - which also come pre-packaged to support best practices from organizations such as NSA and Microsoft, and are also bundled into regulatory compliance templates. The NAC program is a key component of Cisco's Self-Defending Network security strategy which helps customers identify, prevent, and adapt to security threats.
"Cisco is pleased to have Elemental participating in this growing, collaborative industry program," said Russell Rice, director of product marketing, in the Security Technology Group, Cisco Systems, Inc. "Elemental's involvement in the NAC program presents a compelling layered security approach to protecting networks and business critical IT assets. Elemental's involvement also provides the ability to help validate computer security posture as a pre-condition to granting network admission, and the dynamic host grouping and host-level access control capabilities of the Elemental Compliance System help further protect the assets on the network from the hosts that are granted admittance."
"The NAC program is important in helping customers utilize their network to help protect themselves from malicious activity," said Ram Krishnan, Elemental Vice President of Marketing. "Elemental's involvement in the NAC program provides continuous monitoring of host policy and application security, providing additional access controls for a layered approach to security. At the host level, Elemental dynamically groups machines accessing the network based on their security posture and observed network activity, and manages their access rights based on policies designed to protect application and information assets."
This week at the InfoSec World Conference and Exposition 2005 in Orlando, Fla., Elemental announced its corporate launch and unveiled the Elemental Compliance System. These new products are being publicly demonstrated for the first time this week in Elemental's Booth No. 713 on the show floor. To see all Elemental launch announcements released today, go to www.elementalsecurity.com/news.
For more information about NAC, visit www.cisco.com/go/nac.
Elemental approaches security compliance by uniquely placing an emphasis on policy. Elemental provides a Unified Policy Infrastructure integrating the management of security policies that are system agnostic and span multiple layers of individual machines, including OS, application, and network-level best practices. Elemental has also developed FuelTM , the first and only custom policy language that enables intuitive cross-platform policy expression and easy deployment of policies throughout a computing environment. With no programming involved, organizations can express policies in a manner that more closely resembles how they were written in a security policy document, without worrying about implementation details or platform-specific issues.
Elemental enables important security compliance capabilities, including dynamic host groupings that are rooted in a clear business context and IT administrative context. Dynamic groupings are derived from a large number of attributes that describe in detail the configuration and activity of machines. As individual machines change configuration or behavior, the dynamic grouping mechanism automatically assigns them into groups based on their attributes or behavior, and immediately assigns them the policies for those groups. Elemental uses these dynamic groupings to enable adaptive host-level network access controls to prevent unauthorized or non-compliant computers from communicating with a particular computer, groups of computers, or the entire network.
Elemental helps organizations realize cost and time savings by reducing their number of security incidents. The solution reduces exposure to risks by providing visibility and understanding of enterprises' computing environments through continuous monitoring. The Elemental Compliance System also identifies and contains unauthorized machines on the network, and enforces required policies to ensure compliance. The solution also reduces the cost of network and policy administration; and reduces the cost, frequency and effort involved in internal and external audit exercises.
Elemental's products address enterprise problems such as ensuring that policies are being adhered to by all machines in dynamic computing environments; providing for a unified, up-to-date view of all systems in the network and how they are performing against internal security standards and external regulatory requirements; and enforcing access controls and quarantines on systems not meeting guidelines set up by security and IT administrators.
The Elemental Compliance System
The Elemental Compliance System is an enterprise security software solution that enables organizations to express, monitor, and enforce security policies for any computer connecting to the network. It is a client-server security system that provides broad visibility into all hosts in the enterprise and the means to control or contain them through auto-deployed security policies. The system consists of the Elemental server and Elemental agents running on workstations and server hosts throughout a network. Elemental's architecture is unique in its ability to detect, monitor and control hosts with or without Elemental agents running on them.
About Elemental
Elemental Security is a pioneer in the Security Compliance Management market. Elemental's products address enterprises' need to centrally manage the security compliance of all computers in their environments. Elemental provides unified visibility and control to manage dynamic computing environments, enabling enterprises to satisfy compliance requirements and measurably improve their security. Founded in December 2002, Elemental is a privately held company backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Mayfield, Sequoia Capital and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. The company is headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., and has offices throughout the U.S. Go to http://www.elementalsecurity.com for more information.
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Elemental and the Elemental Compliance System are trademarks of Elemental Security, Inc.