IBM Tivoli and Cisco manual Achievable benefits for being compliant

￿Enable an automated remediation process that eases the process of regaining compliancy for all authorized users on the corporate network.

￿Provide partners and visitors access to the Internet but not the corporate intranet.

1.6Achievable benefits for being compliant

How do organizations benefit from compliance with corporate security policies?

Corporate security policies and controls are established to enforce consistent rules that centrally secure access to IT resources across the organization. This also provides consistency in compliance with general business rules. Enforcing and maintaining strong passwords, for example, can make it more difficult for malicious users to access protected data.

Corporate auditors check for consistency in compliancy to corporate policies and look for deviations by individual users. Auditors are always looking for artifacts to prove that users are compliant. These can be used when the enterprise is being legally challenged by government regulators.

The following list spells out some tangible benefits to the organization:

￿Increased accuracy of security compliance reporting

￿Reduced effort and costs in data collection and report generation

￿Timeliness of report generation and artifacts as required during security audits

￿A consistent approach to security compliance reporting across geographically dispersed organizations

Chapter 1. Business context 9