Akonix Introduces Comprehensive Solution to Meet Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC/NASD and HIPAA Regulations.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 25, 2003 Akonix L7 Compliance Manager Exceeds New Compliance Requirements for Public Instant Messaging Exchanging text messages in real time between two or more people logged into a particular instant messaging (IM) service. Instant messaging is more interactive than e-mail because messages are sent immediately, whereas e-mail messages can be queued up in a mail server for seconds or Akonix Systems, Inc., the first company to make public instant messaging safe, secure and manageable for use in enterprise networks, today announces the availability of Akonix L7 Compliance Manager. The addition of the Compliance Manager to Akonix's L7 Enterprise instant messaging gateway creates the most complete public instant messaging (IM) compliance solution in the market today. The combined offering assures total adherence to Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC/NASD and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996, Public Law 104-191) Also known as the "Kennedy-Kassebaum Act," this U.S. law protects employees' health insurance coverage when they change or lose their jobs (Title I) and provides standards for patient health, compliance regulations for public IM. The proprietary Akonix L7 Enforcer(TM) module ensures that the Akonix solution is first to enable companies to fully comply with Federal and industry regulations, solidifying Akonix's position as the market leader in secure and managed public IM communications. Unique Active Policy Enforcement technology addresses the recently enacted Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) website, Title I of HIPAA protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families when (HIPAA), which protects patient privacy and restricts healthcare organizations from transmitting patient sensitive information, except under controlled circumstances. Similarly, SEC/NASD regulations and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act See SOX. require financial service firms and large public companies, respectively, to manage all electronic communications including e-mail and IM. The new Compliance Manager supports the review and audit processes required in these organizations. "It is important for companies to meet the requirements of recent regulatory mandates," said Michael Osterman, director Osterman Research. "Akonix L7 Compliance Manager helps ensure that public companies auditing procedures for public IM are complete, thorough and transparent. With this new functionality in Akonix L7 Enterprise, companies will add a layer of security to their networks, avoid costly fines, and properly monitor and manage public IM in their networks." Built on the award-winning Akonix L7 Enterprise gateway, Akonix L7 unique compliance features include the patent-pending Akonix L7 Enforcer(TM). Compliance efforts rely on an organization's ability to capture all IM traffic. Only Akonix L7 Enforcer ensures compliance by instantly blocking any attempts to circumvent message capture. Akonix's exclusive Active Policy Enforcement approach prevents regulatory compliance violations from occurring, rather than simply logging the activity for review. The new compliance review and auditing component of Akonix L7 Compliance Manager offers full-featured "compliance workflow" for corporate monitoring and reporting on IM activity. Akonix L7 Enterprise enables network administrators to log IM traffic in a searchable archive that satisfies compliance mandates. The Akonix Compliance Manager offers new "compliance workflow" features that ensure audit procedures are followed, while providing an accurate and historical record that reflects the compliance actions of the network administrator to the regulatory mandates. Akonix customers have the ability to appoint auditors and reviewers to search, review, annotate annotate - annotation and audit messages and IM conversations taking place on their networks. Key "compliance workflow" capabilities include marking a message or group of messages as "reviewed", reporting on the percentage of messages handled by an assigned reviewer and limiting reviewer access to messages for a specific employee or groups. Auditors can be assigned to monitor and review the activities of a specific reviewer. "Healthcare organizations are faced with making sure that activity such as public IM (AOL (A division of Time Warner, Inc., New York, NY, www.aol.com) The world's largest online information service with access to the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms and a variety of databases and services. , MSN (1) (MicroSoft Network) A family of Internet-based services from Microsoft, which includes a search engine, e-mail (Hotmail), instant messaging (Windows Live Messaging) and a general-purpose portal with news, information and shopping (MSN Directory). , YAHOO! and ICQ ("I Seek You") A conferencing program for the Internet from Mirabilis, Tel Aviv, Israel (www.icq.com). It provides interactive chat, e-mail and file transfer and can alert you when someone on your predefined list has also come online. ) does not compromise sensitive patient information," said Michael Chipperfield, Chief Information Officer for PPMC PPMC Physician Practice Management Companies PPMC Processor PCI Mezzanine Card PPMC Pearson Product Moment Correlation (Coefficient) PPMC Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic (geological time scale) , an industry leader in healthcare management services. "Akonix, with its active policy enforcement approach, makes sure that companies like ours can remain in compliance with HIPAA rules, by preventing potential violations from occurring." "Compliance concerns are at an all-time high for public companies, specifically in financial services The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page. , healthcare and now with the Sarbanes-Oxley act many public firms are impacted as well," said Peter Shaw, CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. , Akonix. "With corporate use of public IM rapidly increasing, Akonix's Compliance Manager fulfills a legal need for all the corporations that are now faced with complying with Federal, State and industry compliance regulations. Akonix's L7 Compliance Manager enables corporations to benefit from the use of public IM as a viable real-time business tool, while ensuring strict compliance with regulatory mandates." Availability Akonix L7 Compliance Manager is scheduled for general availability in mid-April and can be licensed, on a subscription basis, as an add-on product to the Akonix L7 Enterprise. Prices for Akonix L7 Enterprise start at $2,250 per year for up to 50 users. Prices for longer-termed subscriptions, larger installations and advanced options are available from Akonix or its national reseller network. About Akonix Akonix Systems, Inc. is an award-winning provider of enterprise software that transforms public Instant Messaging into a safe, secure and manageable business-critical application. Backed by three premier venture capital firms Name Location Founding date Managing Partners/Directors Specialty Capital managed 5AM Ventures Menlo Park, CA; Waltham, MA 2002 John Diekman, PhD (managing partner), Scott Rocklage, PhD (managing partner), Andrew Schwab (managing partner) life sciences $200M [1] , the company's offerings protect corporate networks from the dangers of unmanaged public IM and P2P See peer-to-peer and point-to-point. file sharing Copying files from one computer to another. See peer-to-peer network, file sharing protocol and file and printer sharing. . Akonix L7 Enterprise enables corporations to secure, manage and report on IM usage, while satisfying Federal, industry and corporate compliance requirements. A free 30-day trial of Akonix L7 is available for download at www.akonix.com/freetrial. Akonix Rogue Aware is available for free download and detects and reports on Instant Messaging use within an enterprise network. Founded in May 2000, Akonix is headquartered in San Diego, California “San Diego” redirects here. For other uses, see San Diego (disambiguation). San Diego is a coastal Southern California city located in the southwestern corner of the continental United States. As of 2006, the city has a population of 1,256,951. . For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.akonix.com. Akonix is a registered trademark. All other trademarks, tradenames, service marks, service names and images mentioned and/or used herein belong to their respective owners. |
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