Jack Henry’s New ‘Gladiator’ Watches for Security Threats

October 14, 2008 Alex Woodie

You do not mess with the Gladiator. That’s the message from System i banking software developer Jack Henry & Associates, which last week announced the Gladiator Enterprise Security Monitoring system for users of its System i-based core banking systems.

Developed by Gladiator Technology–which Jack Henry acquired more than a year ago, and which operates as a subsidiary of its ProfitStars division–the Gladiator ESM helps make customers more secure by monitoring their systems for security threats, informing them of the latest security issues, and helping them comply with security-related regulations through reporting and monitoring capabilities.

Gladiator Technology provides a range of security solutions including firewall protection, network and server intrusion detection and protection, its eShield service for virus and spam filtering for e-mail, and server vulnerability scanning. The results of each of these activities is collected and presented in an executive management overview and a detailed report.

Jack Henry, which is based in Monett, Missouri, is working with Gladiator Technology to make the Gladiator ESM available to banking customers as a managed service. This approach eliminates the need for Jack Henry customers–which are primarily small to mid size banks and credit unions in the United States–to manage the security environment themselves.

The goal of Gladiator ESM is to provide security alerts to Jack Henry clients in real-time and to provide easy-to-understand reports that support the related regulatory guidelines, says Danny Johnston, group president of Gladiator Technology, which is based in Alpharetta, Georgia. “As regulatory and compliance expectations continue to escalate, financial institutions will need to implement monitoring services from a proactive perspective, and our ESM solution does just that,” he says.