New Cybertrust Partner Security Program Assesses and Evaluates Partner Security Risks

First-of-its-Kind Program Provides Automated and Effective Method for Business Partner Risk Management

HERNDON, Va. - September 26, 2006 - Cybertrust®, the global information security specialist, today announced the launch of its Partner Security Program, a comprehensive solution for organizations to manage the compliance of their extended enterprise. The program will enable Cybertrust customers to identify and significantly reduce risks that result from opening up their networks and systems to partners, customers and other vendors that may not be compliant with an individual organization’s security requirements.

A recent Cybertrust study found that nearly three quarters of organizations worldwide feel that business partners increase their levels of information security risk, and approximately one third of respondents reported that their organizations had suffered a security incident involving business partners within the previous year. However, organizations conducting some form of business partner security assessments experienced a more than three-fold reduction in the likelihood of security incidents.

Cybertrust Partner Security Program was developed to help customers understand and manage the risks of doing business as an extended enterprise through a repeatable and scalable process that controls costs and minimizes the level of effort. Partner Security Program provides customers with a single comprehensive view into the status of all internal business units, external business partners and other entities performing compliance validation activities via a Web-based dashboard. In addition, customers can document and demonstrate to customers, partners, auditors and regulators that they have performed effective due diligence on third parties.

“Cybertrust Partner Security Program fills a unique place in the market by helping to address business risks inherent with the extended enterprise,” said Sandra Palumbo, senior analyst, Yankee Group. “The first formal offering of its kind, Partner Security Program allows businesses to address ongoing risk and compliance challenges with partner networks in a manageable, highly scalable way. As compliance regulations continue to proliferate, it is important for organizations to embrace a formal process around partner security, and to hold their partners and vendors accountable to meeting the standard and reducing risk overall.”

“As a Fortune 500 company, Fiserv takes seriously the security and integrity of its interactions externally with customers and trading partners, as well as internally between its many business units,” said Bob Wilcox, chief information security officer of Fiserv, a $4 billion provider of information management systems and services to the financial and health benefits industries. “We look forward to working with Cybertrust to further enhance our security posture.”

Cybertrust Partner Security Program can assess a customer’s extended business partners and internal business units against industry standards including ISO 17799, HIPAA, and Sarbanes-Oxley, as well as its own custom-developed security standards. An automated questionnaire response scoring engine provides the ability to adapt scoring for individual standard or customer-specific needs, and can be tailored entirely for the customer’s internal standards. This flexibility provides the customer the ability to fine tune its partner program based on its core industry and across levels of business partners, based on their criticality.

“In an environment where many organizations have hundreds or even thousands of external business partners, it is becoming increasingly difficult to establish and maintain a true security overview of the organization as well as to manage the risk associated with the extended enterprise,” said Kerry Bailey, Cybertrust senior vice president of global services. “Cybertrust Partner Security Program empowers organizations to reduce the cost of risk assessment and compliance management with a streamlined, automated process that enhances an organization’s overall security.”

For more information about Cybertrust’s Partner Security Program, please visit www.cybertrust.com/solutions/partner_security_program.

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About Cybertrust

Cybertrust is the global information security specialist, delivering services that secure critical data, protect identities and help customers demonstrate ongoing compliance. Headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, United States with more than 30 offices around the globe, Cybertrust is one of the world’s largest providers of information security and is recognized as the global market leader in managed security services. For more information, visit www.cybertrust.com.

© Cybertrust 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Cybertrust is a registered trademark of Cybertrust Holdings, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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North America Cybertrust Press Contact

SHIFT Communications for Cybertrust Holdings, Inc.

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