IBM invigorated its information governance
product line Feb. 3 with monitoring and data protection software and services
aimed at improving the overall quality of business data for enterprises.
IBM's two new software products, InfoSphere
Business Information Monitor and Optim Data Redaction, are designed to help
enterprises better manage the access and use of their information.
IT governance is a subset of so-called corporate governance that focuses on
risk management in IT systems. The increasing interest in IT governance is due
mostly to compliance initiatives, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United
States and Basel II in Europe.
Although the two are related, IT governance is not the same as MDM (master data
management), which involves the concept of a "master file" for each
piece of data. MDM is similar to virtual or federated database management.
IBM is busy in this sector. Earlier the same
day, the company announced the acquisition
of data integrity software provider Initiate Systems.
"As information flows through an organization, there are many points at
which disruptions in quality, protection and management can occur,"
Michael Curry, IBM's director of strategy
for information management, told eWEEK. "Information governance provides
the framework to ensure that information can be trusted and creates a solid
foundation upon which other technologies can be based."
InfoSphere Business Information Monitor, which IBM
put together from its own research and from the November 2009 acquisition of
Guardium, tracks the quality and flow of an organization's information and
provides real-time alerts about potential flaws. Guardium's technology specializes
in real-time enterprise database monitoring and protection.
For example, if a health insurance company were analyzing profit margins across
different product lines (individual, group, HMO, Medicare), InfoSphere Business
Information Monitor could immediately alert decision makers when a data feed
from a specific geography was not being integrated into the total picture.
Optim Data Redaction protects an organization's information by automatically
recognizing and removing sensitive content from documents and forms.
"In using Optim Data Redaction, for example, a finance company could keep
a customer's credit scores in a loan document digitally blacked out from the
view of an office clerk, while still being visible to a loan officer,"
Curry told eWEEK.
The new software is available now. For
more information, go here.
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