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Risk management, secure and managed file transfers, e-discovery, e-mail archiving, and enterprise search are all positioned for a boom as the business and financial sector call on their unique services more than ever.
1. Risk management
Companies that offer risk assessment tools, such as RSA Security, CA, BMC, McAfee, Symantec, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, Fortify and NitConnect, are on the hot list.
“This financial mess is one colossal example of poor risk management,” Art Coviello, president of EMC’s RSA Security division, one of the largest and most respected data security companies in the world, told eWEEK.
“It’s as if the regulatory authorities and businesses themselves have not recognized the speed at which business is done today,” Coviello said. “So you’ve got speed conspiring with complexity to create more risk, and there’s nobody evaluating the risk!”
There’s nothing wrong with the breakneck speed at which business operates because it does lead to greater productivity, Coviello said.
“If ever there was a time when the kind of work that we’re doing [was important], to raise the profile of risk mitigation and risk-rewarding equation, it’s absolutely right now,” he said.
2. Secure and managed file transfers
This much smaller industry also should expect to be getting more inquiries. Ipswitch, Egnyte, ShareFile, Accellion, LeapFile, Inovis, SterlingCommerce, RepliWeb and YouSendIt are some of the leading vendors in this space.
Ipswitch, a longtime provider of secure and managed file transfer clients and servers, told eWEEK that about 100 million people worldwide use its server-based software to monitor their networks. Ipswitch enables people, enterprises or systems to securely transfer files from Point A to wherever; most of its customers are in the financial services, health care and government sectors.
Ipswitch File Transfer Division President Gary Shottes said that he has seen an uptick in orders for file-transferware from companies directly affected by the Wall Street crisis. For example, a mortgage subsidiary of a major bank recently placed a significant file transfer order to handle the offloading of additional business from its parent bank due to the crisis.
In addition, the mortgage subsidiary is now being acquired by another entity, making the need for additional secure file transfer of data even more important, Shottes said.
“We facilitate the movement of data securely from one point to another, using end-to-end encryption,” Shottes said. “One example is that we automate the movement of mortgage information from 150 bank branches to a single mainframe system. The mainframe will pull that data in on an automated schedule. We’ll then validate that the data was sent and received, and that data in transit has not been tampered with.
“When you have the credentials to get at that data, you know it is sent, transferred, received and stored in a manner consistent with the requirements of that data,” Shottes said.
E-Discovery, E-Mail Archiving and Enterprise Search
3. E-Discovery
Companies such as CA, Kazeon, Autonomy, Clearwell Systems, Attenex, Hewlett Packard Software, Symantec, Seagate Technology’s MetaLINCS, Iron Mountain’s Stratify, LexisNexis, Recommind and some other smaller companies stand to gain business from what many expect to be a surge in litigation surrounding the Wall Street financial crisis.
When lawyers show up in the front lobby, and if their complaint becomes actual litigation, the courts will want to see that an enterprise has corporatewide policies and processes in place to facilitate the discovery of all information-digital and non-digital-relevant to the case. It’s now the law.
Electronic records management software has become a strategic tool for organizations due to increasing national and regional regulations such as the 2006 additions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the Data Protection and Freedom of Information acts.
E-discovery itself is the process by which records are gathered and processed for litigation. This includes anything digital: word processing files, photos, e-mail, audio and video files, instant messaging transcripts, Internet bookmarks, and even data center users’ logs.
The amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (the second anniversary of their implementation by the Supreme Court is coming up Dec. 1) clearly require enterprises to be responsible for keeping close tabs on all their own corporate records and communications-as well as personal communications created during business hours and/or on business or personal computers. Preordained policies must be in place for storage, security and accessibility of the information.
Often, companies being sued are given only 30 to 60 days to produce such evidence or else face stiff fines and court costs until the information is produced.
Expect financial firms to start calling on e-discovery experts as lawyers appear on their horizon.
4. E-mail archiving
Companies that offer quick access to archived files, such as Mimosa, Hewlett Packard Software, CopperEye, Zantaz, Atempo, Azaleos, Webroot, ArcMail, Google’s Postini, GlobalRelay, Iron Mountain’s LiveVault, Quantum, CommVault and MessageOne, also will be getting attention.
Some offer hosted and client/server products; some deal in tape and in disk storage; and some offer physical appliances and/or server software. The choices are many.
5. Enterprisesearch
Leaders in this sector include Autonomy, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Exalead, Vivisimo, Fast, Endeca, Coveo and Omniture.
Enterprise search is a good tool to have in a litigation; however, most of the e-discovery companies certainly have this well-covered within their own product/service packages.