Akibia AssuredCompliance Increases Efficiency and Reduces Risk in Managing Multiple Compliance Mandates

WESTBOROUGH, Mass., March 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Akibia, the leading independent provider of data center, network and security solutions introduced AssuredCompliance, a managed service that helps Fortune 1000 organizations significantly streamline the cumbersome process of managing multiple compliance requirements.

In 1996 IT departments were only concerned with two mandates, but today there are over 200 and more than 2500 security controls associated with them. The cost, both in budget and time, associated with understanding, addressing and proving compliance with these ever expanding mandates is considerable. Because the requirements expand and change on a regular basis, the project of managing compliance is never complete, leaving CIOs and their IT departments constantly at risk of non-compliance with one regulation or another.

In the report "Gartner for IT Leaders Overview: IT Compliance, Audit and Legal Professionals," Gartner analysts John Bace and John P Morency write, "Enterprises should begin to address their compliance needs by building an inventory of regulatory, commercial and organizational mandates, and identifying overlapping and conflicting requirements."

Akibia's Managed Service, AssuredCompliance, provides a single, integrated framework from which organizations can manage each of the requirements that impact their business, whether HIPAA, PCI, state data privacy laws such as MA 201 CMR 17, FISMA or FERPA. By taking a holistic approach to compliance, instead of approaching each requirement on its own, the Managed Service allows organizations to reduce time, costs and effort spent on compliance-related initiatives, while improving overall compliance levels and ensuring easier documentation for proving compliance to auditors.

Akibia's managed compliance service helps clients:

• Identify GAPs in current processes and suggest changes and solutions to rectify vulnerabilities and exposures;
• Document current compliance levels for executives;
• Manage compliance via on-going assessments from experienced, certified consultants that help companies fine-tune their compliance strategy;
• Leverage best practices and information via a portal to ensure compliance concerns are addressed;
• Create a Business Risk Summary which helps companies identify critical issues that should be addressed immediately;
• Align reporting available from current IT solutions to input required by the auditors - ensuring all reports are in the right format required by the auditors.

"The main problem most organizations have with compliance is understanding and reporting on the massive volume of ever-changing regulations," said Robert Klotz, vice president of technology at Akibia. "With AssuredCompliance companies understand and react to compliance from a holistic level, measuring risk, identifying gaps in compliance and understanding which actions and security measures can resolve multiple requirements across multiple mandates. Reports to support compliance are then generated from the single platform, improving staff efficiency and reducing costs."

About Akibia, Inc.

Akibia provides innovative IT solutions that enable leading companies worldwide to optimize, secure, manage and support their mission-critical infrastructure. As an independent advisor, Akibia partners with our customers to deliver solutions that improve the availability, reliability and performance of their data center, network and security infrastructure. Combining expert consulting, integration and support services with world-class customer service, Akibia helps IT organizations reduce costs, increase efficiencies and manage risk in the data center. Founded in 1988, Akibia is an independent IT services company with offices throughout the United States and Europe.

SOURCE Akibia, Inc.