Ecora boosts patch-management pack

With patch management quickly becoming a cog in a larger process to secure desktops and servers, vendors continue to construct platforms that tie together patch and configuration management software into one platform.

The idea is to give corporations a single console for managing configurations, monitoring changes and discovering and applying new patches.

Last week, Ecora released its Total Configuration Management (TCM) platform, a combination of Enterprise Auditor 3.0 and Patch Manager 2.0. The platform includes new features such as cross-platform configuration reporting in Enterprise Auditor and support in Patch Manager for Microsoft Terminal Services and the ability to push patches to Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange.

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With patch management quickly becoming a cog in a larger process to secure desktops and servers, vendors continue to construct platforms that tie together patch and configuration management software into one platform.

The idea is to give corporations a single console for managing configurations, monitoring changes and discovering and applying new patches.

Last week, Ecora released its Total Configuration Management (TCM) platform, a combination of Enterprise Auditor 3.0 and Patch Manager 2.0. The platform includes new features such as cross-platform configuration reporting in Enterprise Auditor and support in Patch Manager for Microsoft Terminal Services and the ability to push patches to Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange.

Next month, Altiris will begin to integrate its new Patch Management Solution into Client Management Suite and Server Management Suite, Altiris' policy-based configuration management products. The company will start by offering a free patch-management toolkit for its client suite.

Patch and configuration management, along with vulnerability assessment and remediation, are becoming a powerful combination for companies seeking to proactively protect themselves from security exploits, experts say. Gartner reports that more than 90% of security exploits are carried out through vulnerabilities for which there is a known patch.

"We like to keep things simple. Why take the more difficult path by trying to do this manually?" says Dave Chamberlain, assistant director of technical services for Temple University Health System in Philadelphia. Chamberlain is in the process of deploying Ecora's TCM. "Ecora will make our environment more secure by helping us figure out where our weaknesses are," he says.

Click to see: Patch city

Chamberlain says the new reporting capabilities in TCM allow for reports that are easy to read and understand. And he says patch management provides valuable efficiencies.

"Any little bit of time savings, even if it is an hour for each patch, is money well spent," he says.

Ecora's Enterprise Auditor supports a host of enterprise systems including Cisco routers and switches; Windows, NetWare and Unix operating systems; databases, and Microsoft Exchange and IBM/Lotus Domino messaging servers. Version 3.0 adds support for HP-UX, IBM's AIX and Red Hat Linux.

Enterprise Auditor is priced at $800, while Patch Manager is $1,280 for 100 nodes. Pricing for the TCM suite has not been announced.

Ecora and Altiris compete with Aelita, BigFix, ConfigureSoft, Loudcloud, PatchLink and St. Bernard Software, and others including larger systems-management vendors such as Computer Associates.

"The vendors are recognizing that the process of problem solving is integral to system management, and they are trying to provide a much more integrated approach," says Tim Grieser, program vice president for enterprise system management at IDC. As the software world grows more complex, he says, the need to patch and fix problems grows more quickly than the ability to fix those problems manually. "That is why patch management will be around for a long time," he says.