Countrywide Financial Uses Preventsys System to Integrate Disparate Security Tools.

CARLSBAD, Calif. -- Preventsys ESM System to Help Countrywide Centralize and Automate IT Security Functions and Allow for Effortless Enterprise-Wide Regulatory Compliance Reporting

Preventsys Inc., a pioneer in enterprise security management, today announced that Countrywide(R) Financial Corporation, a Fortune 500 financial services company, has selected Preventsys' Enterprise Security Management system to help achieve a comprehensive, enterprise-wide depiction of its security posture. Countrywide plans to utilize Preventsys' ESM system to help demonstrate IT compliance with regulations such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and Sarbanes-Oxley.

"We were impressed with Preventsys' enterprise-class solution, which should allow us to centralize the management of several security products and create an overall view of our security posture," said Cheryl Smith, senior vice president for Countrywide. "Moreover, the Preventsys system is designed to generate automated policy IT reports for our internal IT audit team. This has been a manual and time consuming process to demonstrate regulatory compliance, now we expect to easily show enterprise-wide network compliance with the click of a button."

Like most financial services companies, Countrywide previously had several specialized security tools across its network that required extensive manual correlation of security facts. With the Preventsys ESM system, Countrywide will be able to automate and centralize its IT security functions into a single enterprise-wide view of its IT security position.

The Preventsys solution is also capable of translating paper-based regulations into automatically auditable rules, which should help Countrywide better identify and maintain regulatory compliance with requirements across the network. Further, Preventsys' ESM system is designed to alert the IT department of any noncompliant issue and provide steps for remediation.

"We are pleased that Countrywide has chosen the Preventsys system to help address their information security needs," said Tom Rowley, chief executive officer for Preventsys. "Countrywide expects the multiple facets of our system will result in better security and more transparency in regulatory compliance efforts -- and managing both will help increase shareholder value over time."

Preventsys has pioneered enterprise vulnerability management systems for large enterprises that are frustrated with the difficulty of managing multiple vulnerability assessment and configuration management tools to create risk and compliance reports. Unlike security event management (SEM) products that centralize data from security sensors for event monitoring and managed incident response, the Preventsys Enterprise Security Management system integrates best-of-breed security assessment tools into a central security dashboard, dramatically cutting costs and reducing the time it takes to create comprehensive, custom reports from weeks to seconds.

About Preventsys

The Preventsys Enterprise Security Management System automates the expensive, time-consuming process of risk and compliance reporting and centrally manages the vulnerability elimination process for Fortune 1000 companies and large government agencies. For more information, visit www.preventsys.com.

(C) 2005 Preventsys, Inc. All rights reserved. All companies and products mentioned are trademarks and property of their respective owners.

Countrywide Financial Corporation and its subsidiaries are not affiliated with Preventsys and are not responsible for the products or services provided by Preventsys.