Cognos 'defines BI security for enterprise-wide deployments'

Date: 18 August 2006	Issue: One hundred and ninety nine (14/8/06 - 18/8/06) (ICT World)
Category: Technical & Product News	ICT World exclusive

Cognos, a BI and performance management solutions vendor, has announced the results of a recent security evaluation on Cognos 8 Business Intelligence performed by Symantec. Cognos 8 BI aims to help enterprise customers worldwide to continue to progress BI standardisation and performance management initiatives with increased confidence in secure information delivery and access throughout the organisation.

Cognos 8 Business Intelligence has gone through an independent and detailed security evaluation conducted by Symantec, the company says. According to the report, the overall design of Cognos 8 BI employs a robust architecture for secure reporting and analysis.

The security assessment also claims that Cognos understands sound security practices and has surpassed industry best practices by designing a secure architecture and framework for reporting and analysis applications. The audit concluded that, at the time of the assessment, "none of the capabilities assessed contained high risk instances of common Web application vulnerabilities."

"As security subject matter experts, the Symantec Consulting Services organisation is focused on helping companies increase their knowledge of security and other IT risks that impact them today to enable them to effectively meet the requirements of their customers," says Charles Johnson, vice-president, global consulting, Symantec.

Unlike other BI providers that still rely on their own security maintenance, Cognos 8 BI aims to reduce the complexity, time, and costs of administering and maintaining multiple security systems by enabling customers to leverage "best of breed" security providers and in-place application security.

"Organisations want to turn information into competitive advantage, but the more information they deliver, the greater the volume of security concerns," says Gartner analyst, Kurt Schlegel. "In addition, tighter regulatory compliance and a shift to outsourcing on-demand software requires stringent security and a complete audit trail within and beyond the enterprise. BI security needs to be more than just an evaluation checklist item, and enterprises should carefully scrutinise security measures and standards to protect information while fostering access to a wide range of users."

"As BI standardisation and broad user adoption opens up information to more people in the enterprise, organisations may be introducing new security risks," says David McWilliam, MD at Cognos SA.