Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council selects RandomStorm RandomStorm vulnerability assessment technology

(12/10/2009)

RandomStorm has been selected by Basingstoke and Dean Borough Council to supply its automated vulnerability assessment appliance, iStorm™ as part of the local authority’s project to upgrade its IT security compliance strategy.

The iStorm™ appliance will enable the council’s IT security team to schedule regular automated scans of its entire IT network, identifying and alerting the team to any parts of the system that could be potentially vulnerable to current and future security threats. Providing detailed reports on all parts of the network, the information helps to ensure correct configuration of critical servers and that the latest software updates are installed necessary to prevent sensitive data leakage and avoid damaging virus attacks that, if successful, could seriously impede the delivery of the council’s core services.

As well as identifying weaknesses in the system, the iStorm™ reports provide professional remediation advice based on real time threat information collected via its integrated intrusion detection software (IDS); enabling prioritisation of valuable resources to remedy the most urgent and critical problem areas first. The IDS software monitors all external connections to the council’s network, identifies any current threats, correlates the information with actual vulnerabilities in the network and alerts the network manager to the potential threat.

Operating under Government Code of Connection (CoCo) regulations, all local authorities and government departments are required to ensure that their IT infrastructure is protected by the latest security technologies in order to be allowed to access the Government Connect Secure Extranet (GCSx). Routine scanning for new vulnerabilities to ensure that everything is operating correctly is not only part of security best practice procedures for any organisation but is a key requirement within the CoCo compliance standard.

Commenting for Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council, IT Manager Geraint Davies said “The main things that impressed us about RandomStorm’s technology are its ease of use and the fact that the system meets multiple CoCo requirements in one package, significantly helping to streamline the whole compliance process. Another major benefit for us was the fact that the highly sensitive data resulting from the scans could be stored on our own network servers and not in an off-shore data centre; something we also needed in order to comply with the government’s security guidelines.”

The iStorm™ appliance, installed within the council’s IT infrastructure is accessed via a highly graphical management dashboard, which provides an instant overview of the security status of the entire network in one window. Using a simple ‘traffic light’ system, network managers are able to pinpoint the most critical vulnerabilities at a glance before drilling down deeper into the system for more detailed information and scheduling any necessary remediation work.

Related topics:  Data management and data security   Internet and Web security   Network Security 

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