GOVERNMENT

Sun Microsystems and Deloitte today announced a collaborative initiative to help companies develop efficient, cost-effective and sustainable technology and business processes to address their unique regulatory compliance and technology governance challenges. As part of this initiative, Sun and Deloitte today announced their plans for the Center for Technology Governance and Compliance (CTGC), which combines Deloitte's consulting and advisory services with Sun's IT management solutions and services, including its Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) and Identity Management technology portfolios. Access to the professionals and services within the CTGC is available through Sun Solution Centers. To learn more, please visit its Web site. As a worldwide leader in network computing systems, Sun provides scalable solutions designed to protect and manage business-critical information through its lifecycle. The combination of Deloitte and Sun brings together complementary competencies to deliver a business-driven, technology-enabled framework for creating and implementing technology governance and compliance strategies and programs. The Challenge In today's era of increased technology complexity and stringent regulatory controls, companies are challenged to protect the interests of a broad spectrum of stakeholders by incorporating governance and compliance planning into their IT activities, projects and programs. Achieving sustainable compliance requires a consistent, consolidated and enterprise-wide framework which incorporates people, process and technology. In the AMR Research report, 'Spending in an Age of Compliance, 2006-2007', John Hagerty, Vice President of Research wrote, "Compliance is an all-encompassing set of activities that cross business and IT groups-everyone is affected in some way. The numbers show that technology is now playing an increasingly significant role in the integration of those compliance requirements into existing business processes." "CXOs understand all-too-well the devastating impact that noncompliance can have on a business, which is why attention to the issue has expanded beyond the IT department to the corner offices as well," said Sara Gates, vice president, Identity Management, Sun Microsystems. "We developed the CTGC to offer better support to companies through a collaboration of business, compliance, and technology competencies that leverage Sun's entire technology software portfolio, including Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) and Identity Management, running on the Solaris 10 Operating System. Together, they represent all the key components to a technology-enabled compliance framework. By joining with Deloitte, we're helping companies address the complex and critical task of aligning business and IT processes to better meet their governance and compliance requirements and to reduce risk exposure." "In this time of heightened expectations for information quality, companies need to shift their thinking from a tactical, short-term approach to compliance toward a more strategic, sustainable approach that includes improved governance, standardized processes and enabling technologies," said Lee Dittmar, principal and national leader of Deloitte Consulting's Enterprise Governance practice. "Sun's technologies can be leveraged to build solutions for integrating compliance into clients' daily operations, building accountability into the IT operation and improving long-term business performance." Sun and Deloitte Center for Technology Governance and Compliance (CTGC) The CTGC assists companies in undertaking initiatives that integrate methodologies and frameworks driven by regulatory oversight requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, industry requirements such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and frameworks such as Committee for Sponsoring Organizations (COSO), Control Objectives for Information Related Technology (COBIT), the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and BASEL II into an over-arching, business-driven technology governance and compliance strategy that leverages technology to monitor, enhance and enforce corporate policies. The CTGC compliance solution will include four primary components and benefits: - A business, process, and technology assessment of a company's current compliance initiatives, resulting in specific recommendations to help companies prioritize actions to mitigate risk, efficiently sustain compliance, help meet privacy and governance requirements, and establish effective practices for long-term technology governance. - A security methodology to enable user access controls and segregation of duties that facilitates organizational efforts to streamline and enhance processes for granting user access to applications and information, and provides reporting tools and mechanisms to support periodic reviews and confirmation of user access rights. - An information governance methodology that captures, classifies, archives, retrieves, and purges appropriate corporate electronic records to comply with regulatory mandates, also enabling electronic discovery and mitigating legal risk. - A controls methodology to provide visibility into the compliance operations of the enterprise. This includes preventative and detective monitoring of ERP and other systems for configuration changes and policy violations as well as remediation procedures and workflow tracking. This promotes policy adherence, helps proactively detect and correct problems, holds responsible parties accountable, and promotes more reliable financial reporting. According to Michael Rasmussen of Forrester Research, "Firms can no longer afford to approach compliance as a periodic and tactical project like meeting the Sarbanes-Oxley 404 deadline. Instead, they must view compliance as an ongoing strategic initiative and make sure they have the right level of oversight." (Forrester Research, "Business Complexity Challenges Compliance," July 14, 2005) If you would like to learn more about compliance offerings at Sun contact Compliance-Interest@sun.com.