| New integrity control suite helps companies develop configuration control schemes for efficient IT disaster recovery Verifying system configurations and reestablishing security following a disaster can be a daunting task and is often one of the limiting factors in reducing recovery time objectives. Westinghouse Electric Company’s StatePointPlus systems integrity control software suite is a new automated configuration control tool that can help in this area. StatePointPlus is a fully integrated suite of software products that provides organisations with a workable, scaleable, and continuous proactive strategy for pinpointing and rectifying unauthorised alterations in systems across the enterprise - before, during and after disasters and security breaches. In the event of a disaster and subsequent system restoration, StatePointPlus can verify if any files have been corrupted, if services and processes are properly reactivated and can determine the integrity of the registry on Windows operating systems. To speed recovery efforts, StatePointPlus enables the system administrator or security administrator to take recovery actions from a central location. Having this high level view of enterprise computers, with the ability to reach out and make critical changes, can be extremely valuable in the midst of network recovery activities. Mirror/disaster recovery sites are vital insurance steps for businesses that need to protect against an event that makes critical computer systems inoperable. Part of the challenge of establishing and maintaining such a site is maintaining exact replicates of the production systems being mirrored or replicating and verifying the production systems to their last known configuration. Production systems typically change over time so the challenge is one of getting mirrored systems to continually track the production systems. StatePointPlus can be used to establish mirrored systems that replicate production systems in all critical areas down to the byte. Then StatePointPlus can monitor production systems to ensure that the mirrored systems track their production counterparts precisely. Since StatePointPlus matches the system to a specific configuration strategy, the mirroring process can be accomplished while using the software to enforce configuration control requirements on the production systems themselves. StatePointPlus detects and can accept or rectify incremental changes that creep into configurations over time. The system's current state as well as the full history of how it got there are archived and available for trend analysis of the enterprise's systems.
•Date:
22nd August 2003 • Region: N.America/World •Type:
Article •Topic: IT
continuity
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