Palisade Systems has launched the Palisade Risk Assessment Program. The new service will help firms identify private data, evaluate network risks, ensure full compliance with federal security regulations, and provide a secure environment for network communications.

Palisade's Risk Assessment Program provides an organization with an accurate and comprehensive report of their network traffic and potential security threats to its sensitive data by identifying and assessing:

• Network application use and traffic.
• Risk exposures to confidential information.
• Confidential information being shared and distributed.
• Potential liability exposures.
• Network use and security policy violations.
• Malicious activities and security vulnerabilities that open backdoors to critical assets.

Palisade Systems can complete an assessment over a period of three days. For the assessment, Palisade Systems' engineers install a passive network appliance and monitor network traffic, application use, and content, looking for any network security or compliance issues. The report provides a clear look into the effectiveness of the organization's existing network security and data protection strategy.

"Federal compliance regulations are mandating companies to protect their private data, but offer no suggestions and specific language on how companies should protect their sensitive data from insider threats," said Kurt Shedenhelm, president and CEO of Palisade Systems. "Palisade's Risk Assessment Program and report provides valuable tools and information that companies can use to identify internal threats on their sensitive data and know exactly where gaps exist in their current security infrastructure and corporate policies, resulting in the prevention of compliance violations, fines and legal action by the government."

Palisade Systems offers its business partners and customers multiple network appliances to proactively enforce corporate governance and acceptable network use policies (AUP), ensure regulatory compliance enforcement, and stop confidential information leaks. The company's suite of products, including PacketSure and PacketGuard, provide increased levels of network security beyond existing firewalls and filters. PacketSure is a gateway security appliance that identifies and stops intellectual property and content before it can leave an organization's network. PacketGuard is an internal security appliance that manages and stops intellectual property and content from being illegally shared or viewed by unauthorized internal users. The products scale easily to meet the needs of enterprises in gigabit network environments.