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BMC BladeLogic Database Automation (BBDA) Simplifies Runbook Management and Change Control Requirements

Industry: Healthcare

With the institution of HIPAA and other data protection requirements, healthcare providers are under more pressure than ever to not only protect patient data, but to institute demonstrable controls over the dissemination of sensitive patient information. This requires a rigorous and protected audit trail. In an effort to meet compliance standards and protect data, a worldwide healthcare company that provides transformational medical technologies and services, selected BMC BladeLogic Database Automation (BBDA) as the mechanism to institute and automate their standard build for databases deployed.

Runbook management and change control requirements were increasingly stalling projects, while having various teams preparing hosts and deploying databases compounded the issue.

BBDA Solution:

BBDA solution simplifies the build and auditing task by incorporating it into an overall management solution. As a result, audit information as it pertains to database deployment, patching, reconfiguration, or other database functions can be easily controlled and tracked through the BBDA interface. This information cannot be modified or erased by any user. BBDA logs and tracks events within the database by using existing meta data. This data -- already available within the RDBMS system -- is manipulated in the following ways:

• Activities can easily be tracked by associating a user and a set of objects, then specifying what actions should be logged.

• A graphical interface is provided for each database, to view users and database objects for auditing.

• Key policies, such as auditing all actions taken by privileged users, can be easily defined.

• BBDA can provide enhanced security by sending special alerts when specific information has been altered.

Conclusion:

For organizations with complex database infrastructures, the major challenge of an automation initiative that focuses on standard builds, auditing and compliance is not gathering data but processing and analyzing the data required to protect the audit trail. A senior dba commented, "Validating any technology in the healthcare industry is a challenge. BMC Software has diligently worked with us since the beginning to ensure our database automation initiative was a success." Through an integrated interface, BBDA simplifies auditing by organizing the information within a usage context, ensuring enterprises can both meet compliance standards and maintain stringent control over the security of all their data assets.