GRC Roll-up: SAP's BusinessObjects GRC Available, Google Gets Security Certified

By David Roe (@druadh20) Aug 10, 2011

This week, after announcing its release in March, SAP has put BusinessObjects 10 GRC on general release, Google gets some more security certification, BMC offers cloud Lifecycle Management to mitigate the risks associated with cloud computing outages, and Hostway offers email encryption.

SAP BusinessObjects 10 GRC Released

After announcing last March that it had unveiled v10.0 of Business Objects GRC, SAP (news, site) has announced that the full version is generally available.

The release gives enterprises policy management and audit capabilities, granular security and enterprise support for transporting and archiving data that may be required in the future.

The fact that all these abilities lie in the same environment means that they overcome the difficulties associated with fragmented platforms including poor risk visibility or processes that are reactive or manual, as well as cutting the number of people that will actually have to work on GRC.

Consisting principally of SAP BusinessObjects Access Control, SAP BusinessObjects Risk Management and SAP BusinessObjects Process Control, they effectively share processes and data using a common interface that can be customized according to the enterprise and line-of-business.

The impression of a new platform, rather than simple upgrades to existing features, is heightened by the common look and feel across all the applications, which include business intelligence reports as well as a dashboard and a graphical tool that helps define and display risks as they occur.

The new features also make the products easier to use, SAP says, and enable users with limited GRC expertise to use it.

Google Gets More Security Certification

The first cloud security offering this week comes from Google. If you missed it earlier, Google has announced that it has completed SSAE-16 Type II and ISAE 3402 Type II security audits.

You may be familiar with the SAS 70 Type II, more commonly referred to as SAS 70, a set of auditing guidelines for service organizations that evaluate whether adequate operational controls are in place and are sufficient.

The standard is one of the most common and recognizable indicators that a service provider is doing the things necessary to protect customer data. In June of this year, the standard was replaced by SSAE-16 and its well-traveled international counterpart, ISAE 3402.

Given that the standard has only recently been introduced, few cloud providers have had an opportunity to complete the newer audit process. However, Google has managed to jump out in front of the competition and achieve certification for Google Apps, Postini, Google App Engine, Google Apps Script and Google Storage for Developers. Interested in more?

BMC’s Cloud Lifecycle Management

The second cloud security offering this week is from BMC (news, site), which has announced additional capabilities integrated into its BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution.

With it, BMC says, companies can proactively ensure the service quality of cloud services and avoid many of the risks of cloud computing such as outages, performance and capacity issues, while simplifying cloud administration.