The media is continually reporting on security breaches that resulted in the loss of personal and financial customer data, and heavy fines and penalties for the victimized companies. Not surprisingly, protecting against these attacks is one of the highest priorities in the retail sector. EMC Ionix Network Configuration Manager (formerly VoyenceControl) full lifecycle approach to configuration and change management provides holistic assurance that the configuration profile of your network infrastructure is tightly change controlled and audited, and meets your corporate security requirements at all times.

In addition to securing the network from theft, retail enterprises must now prove to internal and external auditors, government entities, and other partner organizations that their entire IT infrastructure meets compliance standards. Network Configuration Manager provides superior reporting to demonstrate continuous compliance with standards and regulations such as SOX, GLB, SAS-70, HIPAA, and PCI, and provides the tools to maintain the network in a continuous compliant state.

The continuous availability and reliability of network-provided services is crucial to the success and even the survival of today’s retail enterprises because most, if not all, of their business services are delivered over the corporate network. If the consistency of the underlying network infrastructure is not maintained, those services become unreachable and unavailable. Enterprise Management Associates states that between 60 and 80 percent of service-affecting network outages are caused by change, and retail enterprises must control how change happens in the network and develop efficient ways to roll out changes so that service availability is not impacted. Network Configuration Manager has been designed specifically with this task in mind. Change management follows ITIL-compatible process and regulates who can change what and when, as well as what changes must be approved by whom. Plus, all changes are audited for compliance with corporate policies and standards and well and government and other regulatory standards.

Retail enterprises live and thrive, as most businesses do, on the margin between the cost of providing a service and what can reasonably be charged for it. Automation provided by Network Configuration Manager reduces the time spent on network configuration tasks from minutes per device to minutes per network, so commonly executed task such as credential rolls, ACL updates and OS updates can be done in a fraction of the time manual processes take. This mean the same staff can be leveraged over many more devices without growth in headcount, increasing market share through acceleration of IT-driven service offerings. The resources and time made available by the same automation that reduces your IT operational expense provides the opportunity to accelerate the deployment of new IT-driven business services. Time avoided on repetitive IT tasks can be spent on higher value projects and used to accelerate your company's IT projects.

The resources and time made available by the same automation that reduces your IT operational expense provides the opportunity to accelerate the deployment of new IT-driven business services. Time avoided on repetitive IT tasks can be spent on higher value projects and used to accelerate your company's IT projects.