OpenPages takes on the least glamorous parts of identity managment

Last issue I promised a look at a veteran company in the governance, risk and compliance sector that I'd been planning a closer look at for over a year. And today we're actually going to take a look at OpenPages, a company that's been around since 1996 and yet still might be considered an "overnight success."

Governance and compliance are some of the least glamorous and most arduous parts of the identity management field. It’s thankless work with little reward. Anything that can remove the drudgery that even a born-auditor has trouble loving is a gigantic plus. (Compare Network Auditing and Compliance products)

When OpenPages released Version 5 of its Governance Platform last year, my Network World colleague Jim Kobielus said: “OpenPages lets organizations manage several overlapping GRC mandates across many jurisdictions and business processes” by combining several point solutions into one integrated platform. It’s both broad and deep while being relatively easy to implement and manage. And now there’s a new release.

The just released OpenPages Version 5.5 leverages standards-based Web 2.0 technologies to deliver an enhanced user interface, stronger security administration and advanced configuration capabilities. This version delivers enterprise-wide management of risk by enabling you to easily embed risk management into everyday business processes with a level of fine-grained configurability to adapt to your unique risk management methodology. In other words, to quote the fast-food jingle, with OpenPages you can have it your way.

The OpenPages Platform itself is merely a foundation, though, but it is a solid foundation for your enterprise risk management (ERM) efforts because it allows numerous components (such as policy management, issue management, risk and control self assessment, key risk indicators and a loss event database) to be unified as a single, enterprise-wide risk and compliance management system. It’s easy to use, yet comprehensive. There’s much more to the system then I can hope to mention here, but if you browse to the Web site, you’ll be able to discover all facets of the rich tapestry of the GRC solutions.