REGULATION COMPLIANCE AND THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT.

This article discusses compliance with internal processes and standards as well as compliance to external regulation such as software license audits or compliance with government regulations. Compliance and regulation have become a major shaping force in the world of IT. All organizations, regardless of size, industry or location, must factor in how they will deal with a continuing flow of new requirements and pressures. Most compliance or regulatory policies enforced by Novell ZENworks have their roots in security or identity of the user or resource, or in the use of the asset. This is true regardless if the mandate is internal or from an outside agency. Applying identity management to configuration management has long been a competitive advantage of ZENworks. ZENworks provides a secure management environment to creating and enforcing policies that match up a users entity with the devices they can use, how that device should be configured, the applications they can access and information they can see. Novell ZENworks Asset Management provides a Web-based view of one's compliance status. It provides visibility into desktop-application-usage trends and details. Reports indicate who use what products and types of software.