Tripwire Supports IBM's Autonomic Computing Initiative

Business Wire, April 14, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 14, 2003

Tripwire's Integrity Assurance Technology is a Fundamental Component

for Self-Healing, Self-Protecting Computer Systems

Tripwire Inc., the world leader in integrity assurance solutions, announced its ongoing relationship with IBM to further integrate Tripwire's technology within IBM's autonomic computing initiative -- a systemic view of computing modeled after a self-regulating biological system.

Through this relationship, the companies are working together to advance the state of the art in infrastructure and integrity management, and the companies will bring these capabilities to market within the framework of autonomic computing.

Autonomic computing has been challenged as being more of a long-term vision and not immediately attainable. However, customers like Canadian Pacific Railroad are already taking advantage of autonomic computing technology by leveraging the integration of IBM and Tripwire software. Today, IBM Tivoli Risk Manager and IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console integrate with Tripwire for Servers, automating event processing so Tivoli users can more easily manage changes that impact IT productivity.

"With the integration of Tripwire and Tivoli, we are already taking advantage of the power of autonomic computing," said Val King, Manager of Information Systems Security at Canadian Pacific Railroad. "Tripwire's ability to feed detailed knowledge of the state of our systems into Tivoli not only allows us to take swift, informed action -- it also provides the means to automate responses based on what's happening in our environment."

Tripwire's instrumentation of heterogeneous IT elements across the enterprise feeds the autonomic computing "brain" -- the Tivoli software -- with the data needed to ensure that actions taken are appropriate and acceptable relative to corporate policy.

"The ability of Tripwire's technology to establish a baseline of the network in a healthy state, identify any changes to that baseline and enable rapid remediation is a key to enabling computer systems that are aware of their own condition and can heal themselves," said Arvind Krishna, vice president of security products, Tivoli software, IBM. "Tripwire's ability to provide visibility within today's complex networks is paramount in creating systems that can adapt to IT management challenges and ultimately free up IT resources."

IBM's autonomic computing strategy espouses that the industry must use the power of computers and automation to create leverage in IT management so that existing staff can use their limited resources on new developments and more meaningful projects rather than mundane network management tasks. IBM has stated that this challenge is beyond the scope of any single vendor. It is in this spirit of vendor cooperation that IBM has engaged with Tripwire and others to help make autonomic computing a reality. In an autonomic environment, the total IT system and its individual components -- from desktop computers to mainframes to software applications and middleware -- are self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing and self-protecting. They regulate themselves and, sometimes, each other. Together, they proactively manage the entire system, and mask the inherent complexity of these activities from end users. Tripwire's data integrity assurance software plays a vital role in all four aspects of the self-defined autonomic computing environment.

"Tripwire customers continue to value our software's ability to significantly reduce the time they spend firefighting and troubleshooting system problems," said Wyatt Starnes, founder, president and CEO of Tripwire. "We feel IBM's leadership toward this goal -- creating computers that require less human intervention -- is a strong move in the right direction, and we're proud to be a part of their autonomic computing strategy."

Used by companies worldwide for applications including network auditing, configuration control and change management, disaster recovery and data forensics, Tripwire software provides a foundation for corporate information integrity and security. Tripwire software establishes a baseline of data in its desired state, detects and reports any changes to the baseline -- whether internal or external, malicious or accidental -- and enables rapid discovery and remediation when an undesired change occurs.

About Tripwire Inc.

Tripwire Inc. is the world leader in integrity assurance solutions. Tripwire software assures the integrity of data by establishing a baseline of data in its desired state, detecting and reporting any changes to the baseline, and ensuring rapid discovery and remediation when undesired change occurs. Tripwire is highly recommended as a Best Practice by many security advisory groups, and is featured in the NSA's "60 Minute Security Guide." Tripwire customers include Global 3000 companies, e-business corporations, and key public sector organizations such as Comcast, AT&T, Ernst & Young and the U.S. House of Representatives. Tripwire is headquartered in Portland, Ore., with offices in Japan, France, Germany, and users in 92 countries around the world. For more information about Tripwire, please visit the company Web site at www.tripwire.com.