Vanguard Security Software Selected by Large Bank to Protect z/OS Data, Applications

LAS VEGAS, March 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Vanguard Integrity Professionals, the largest independent provider of enterprise security software for System z, today announced that a $9B U.S. bank holding company has selected Vanguard Administrator™ and Vanguard Advisor™ software to protect its new z/OS® RACF® security environment. The bank, which has over a dozen full service community banks and more than 200 locations, recently migrated to IBM Security Server (RACF). After conducting a competitive review, the bank chose the Vanguard professional services team to assist with its migration to RACF, and Vanguard security administration and reporting tools to deploy post migration.

One of the bank's goals was to minimize its risks during the migration to RACF. Vanguard was selected to perform the migration, over other options, because of its professional services team's strengths:

• extensive experience managing migrations from other security subsystems to RACF.
• great customer references.
• ability to rapidly complete migrations and implementations.
• customized approach to meeting all of the bank's requirements.
• history of providing exceptional customer support during and after migrations.

The bank also knew it would need to deploy additional security administration and reporting tools post migration to easily manage the RACF database and allow for customized compliance reporting. Since the bank had been using another security subsystem for years, the security team did not have a working knowledge of native RACF. Because of budget constraints, it could not spend a lot of time and money on RACF-specific training.  

"The bank, after evaluating alternative z/OS security software options, chose Vanguard Administrator and Advisor because ease of use and learning were critical requirements. The bank's security team immediately realized that Vanguard tools are extremely easy to deploy and use, and don't require extensive RACF training," said Art Hatfield-Mihelic, senior professional services consultant at Vanguard. "With Vanguard software, from day one, the bank's z/OS security team was able to easily manage, report on and improve its security processes."

Vanguard Administrator provides the most comprehensive, automated security administration capabilities for z/OS systems, and reduces the time and investment required to administer RACF. With Vanguard Administrator, organizations can simplify and enhance security management functions while improving the quality of their overall z/OS security. Vanguard Administrator is proven to be easier to learn than other security administration tools, enabling security administrators to perform tasks faster and more accurately. Deployed by hundreds of organizations worldwide, Vanguard Administrator is the market leading security administration tool for z/OS environments running RACF.

Vanguard Advisor enables security administrators to easily find and fix potential security problems and report on the status of their systems. The software delivers complete security event detection, analysis and reporting capabilities for z/OS systems. With Vanguard Advisor, security administrators can automatically access log data and information from RACF and analyze security events by quickly drilling down through multiple data layers. Vanguard Advisor also performs full-time continuous event monitoring and automatically alerts security administrators when intrusions are attempted or security is compromised. Reporting is easy with Vanguard Advisor as many pre-defined summary and detailed reports are included, and custom reports can be created quickly. For the case study about how the bank is using Vanguard software and services, visit www.go2vanguard.com.

About Vanguard Integrity Professionals

Vanguard Integrity Professionals, an IBM Business Partner, provides enterprise security software and services that solve complex security and regulatory compliance challenges and deliver a rapid return on investment. With automated solutions for Audit and Compliance, Operational Security and Intrusion Management, Vanguard enables government agencies and corporations around the world to ensure continuous monitoring of z/OS systems, safeguard secure cloud computing domains, and protect critical data and applications from cybersecurity threats. For more information, visit www.go2vanguard.com.

Vanguard Administrator and Vanguard Advisor are trademarks of Vanguard Integrity Professionals, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

z/OS and RACF are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

SOURCE Vanguard Integrity Professionals