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| Published on Wednesday, December 24,
2003 |
PatchEasy For The Middle East
SecureSynergy
and Al Rostamani Communications have announced a partnership to
offer ‘automated patch management’ solutions to secure IT networks
in the Middle East.
Patch management refers to automatic updating
or 'patching' of all networked PCs and clients with the required
security updates, patches, bug fixes, version upgrades, service
packs, anti-virus signature updatesto ensure that all the clients,
servers and gateways are running the most current and updated
software to avoid security breaches or hacker
attacks.
“Companies will have to become more proactive in their security
planning and implementation faster to install patches, implement
and update policies, thereby increasingly protect as well as improve
return on investment,” says V.Balaji, regional manager, SecureSynergy,
Middle East.
Most companies suffer billions of dollars in losses in terms of
downtime, lost data and security breaches by running old software
which doesn’t have the required updates given by the vendor. SecureSynergy
attributes this to lack of automated solutions to patch 1000’s of
PC easily and lack of user awareness.
“We are working with our local partner (Al Rostamani) to give regional
IT managers a better understanding of how critical information security
patches are to manage their IT infrastructure,” says Anil Menon,
senior vice president, SecureSynergy.
According to the vendor, each week 60 new software vulnerabilities,
more than 100 new viruses are detected with companies receiving
an average of 300 IT-related security threats each month, which
most enterprises are not aware of. SecureSynergy believes the potential
for patch management solutions is immense as more than 90% of corporate
networks run on Windows and Microsoft applications on the client
side.
The company’s Patch Easy
version 6.1 automates patch management for all Microsoft business
and consumer applications like Windows Server 2003, XP, IIS, MS
Office, Internet Explorer and others. Patch Easy currently doesn’t
support patch management for Macintosh, Unix or Linux users, but
the vendor adds that customers can expect support for other platforms
and non-Microsoft applications in early 2004.
SecureSynergy uses a patch-engine licensed from St.Bernard, a leading
patch management vendor, and offers it with its Managed Security
Service (MSS) offerings. The company has also partnered with McAfee
for security solutions.
The pricing of the automated patch
managed solution is based on the number of clients managed or on a
per PC patched basis. Patch Easy is priced at 175 Dirhams, per user
or client managed for a 2-year subscription with 2 months of support
and training.
“We have partnered with SecureSynergy which offers security monitoring
and support, patch mangement, business continuity and enterprise
security services,” says Hari Kumar, business development manager,
Al Rostamani Communications (ARC).
ARC is a part of the US$1.4 billion Al Rostamani
Group, and works with more than 20 IT vendors like IBM, Lucent and
others to offer regional companies IT related services.
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