By Pam Johnson

I talk a lot about compliance as it relates to NERC-CIP and the Utilities industry, but there are many companies in other industries with large, critical system networks, and they often deal with the same burden of meeting security and compliance policies.

In this case study (Case Study: Delivering Secure, Compliant, and Reliable Service with IT Foundation Management), a large IT outsourcing company used IT Foundation Management to efficiently and effectively manage the system networks for both government and commercial clients.

Monitoring hardware and software and controlling access is highly important in these critical systems. This customer used IT Foundation Management to capture and log everything that happened in the systems, ensuring that no critical events were overlooked.

But they also had to address the security complications which arise with moving personnel and/or systems offshore. Fortunately, IT Foundation Management could solve that one too, by logging and controlling all connections to the system through secure pseudo terminal connections. These time-stamped logs captured all of the actions taking place, providing this customer with control and accountability, and keeping them prepared for future audits.