American Red Cross gets charitable donation of the security sort

I've always been a huge fan of the American Red Cross. How can you not admire an organization that shelters, feeds and provides emotional support to victims of disasters?

They also supply nearly half of the nation's blood; teach lifesaving skills; provide international humanitarian aid and support military members and their families.

So when I learned that they would be receiving the donation of security, I thought it worth a mention here.

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Jessica Devaney of Courion Corp. -- a vendor of access governance, compliance and provisioning technology -- e-mailed to let me know the Red Cross was chosen as the first recipient of a donation of enterprise software licenses for Courion’s Access Assurance Suite, which will enable automated password reset and synchronization capabilities for 65,000 users, as well as account disable functionality.

The new charity program -- The CourionCares Program for Non-Profits -- is a semi-annual contest that offers a donation of identity & access management and compliance technology to "deserving 501-C3 and international charities, based on IT needs and how the software will impact the organization," she said. "The goal of the program is to lighten the financial burden on IT and enable charities to focus more energy on its most impactful programs."

By disabling user access through automated de-provisioning, the Red Cross will reduce the risk of potential security and compliance breaches by eliminating system access when a user changes responsibilities or leaves the organization.

Most importantly, no risk management strategy succeeds without strong policy enforcement, Devaney said. Red Cross CISO Suzanne Hall said this in a statement:

“We take the security of our network and the protection of our users’ privacy very seriously. Part of the process in securing sensitive data is ensuring that our internal policies are consistently enforced. Automating password management and account disable processes and allowing our highly-trained IT staff to concentrate on more strategic initiatives makes our operations more efficient. By utilizing the Courion solution to reduce calls to the help desk and close security gaps, we hope to improve both security and privacy, while streamlining our IT processes - ultimately enabling us to deliver on the mission of the American Red Cross to help more people get access to the services they need.”

Charitable organizations like this live and die by the donations they receive, and, rightfully so, people think of the core needs when giving money. But security tends to be at the bottom of the priority list.

I'm glad to see what Courion is doing because, of course, every little bit helps.

--Bill Brenner