New Boundary Technologies Releases Windows Lockdown Solution for Federal Government Agencies

New Boundary Technologies today announced availability of its Government Lockdown Solution. Powered by the company's Policy Commander security policy management product, the Government Lockdown Solution addresses the security configuration needs of government IT officials tasked by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) with locking down Windows XP and Windows Vista workstations. Under the OMB directive in policy memorandum M-07-11 (Implementation of Commonly Accepted Security Configurations for Windows Operating Systems), federal agencies have until February 1, 2008 to adopt approved security configurations for Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems.The company's Government Lockdown Solution simplifies compliance with OMB policy memorandum M-07-11 by automating security configuration management and leveraging security templates approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). It continuously secures workstations against both internal and external threats to protect systems and electronic information against malicious activity while reducing compliance costs and streamlining processes. The solution is comprised of three components:

* Lockdown Guide - To help government IT staff understand and implement approved security configurations, the company has created a Windows XP security configuration guide. This publication outlines requirements and provides guidance on specific security templates and policies federal agencies can use to become compliant.
* Security Policy Library - New Boundary Technologies' Security Policy Library contains proven computer security policies created by the company and security configuration templates developed and/or approved by NIST that provide the levels of security mandated by the OMB.
* Policy Commander - The Government Lockdown Solution is powered by Policy Commander, the company's automated security policy enforcement and management product. Policy Commander dramatically improves the security state of Windows computers by eliminating inherent configuration vulnerabilities, automatically monitoring security configuration compliance, and remediating computers when they fail to comply with assigned security policies and configurations.

"As they work to comply with this OMB security mandate, federal agencies are finding that manually locking down Windows systems is a painstaking, time and resource intensive process," said Kim Pearson, president and chief executive officer of New Boundary Technologies. "Just testing applications to make sure they continue to perform under different security configurations can take hours and hours of staff time. But with Policy Commander, you can automate the processes involved to get the job done quickly and easily."

Policy Commander simplifies Windows security configuration management by automating the implementation and enforcement of computer security policies. Policy Commander continuously monitors computer configurations to deliver real-time insight into the security state of the network. It immediately notifies administrators of all instances of non-compliance, and can automatically remediate non-compliant computers to ensure continuous security policy enforcement. Compliance information is presented in both summarized form and in granular detail to meet the reporting needs of system administrators responsible for ongoing security configuration management.