Network Frontiers, a leader in IT regulatory compliance management, has announced the immediate availability of the Information Assurance Compliance Maturity Model Index (IACMMI), a free guide to assist organizations in accurately assessing their capability to comply with information assurance laws, regulations, contractual obligations, and standards.

Extrapolating various maturity models such as Carnegie Mellon's CMMI, ISO's maturity standards, and ISACA's interpretations on maturity models, the IACMMI includes a comprehensive rating system that incorporates seamlessly into the Unified Compliance Framework (UCF), the industry's first independent database to simplify IT compliance.

"Compliance is more than a set of legal requirements, it's also a process," says Dorian Cougias, CTO of Network Frontiers. "How well you communicate and document the controls you put into place, assign responsibility, train your staff, and provide them with the tools they need, will determine an organization's progress toward a successful information assurance program. We created the IACMMI to help guide organizations through the compliance process."

Within the UCF, capability maturity measurement is a built-in process with the IACMMI reporting incorporated into each of the UCF spreadsheets. Beyond merely accepting a control within the UCF, an organization should measure its level of maturity for adapting that control within its day-to-day compliance activities. This maturity assessment should be made for each and every control that an organization has made the decision to support.

Compliance managers who would like to measure how well their processes are working can sign up for an IACMMI email series (that includes all process maturity levels) and a free UCF Webinar at http://www.unifiedcompliance.com/it_compliance/iacmmi/.

About the UCF

The Unified Compliance Framework is the first independent initiative to exclusively support IT compliance management by focusing on commonalities across regulations, standards-based development, and simplified architectures. Only the UCF enables compliance across multiple authority documents simultaneously as well as a single point of control. Unified Compliance's strategic approach to IT compliance reduces cost, limits liability, and leverages the value of compliance-related technologies and services across the enterprise, the company says. The UCF simplifies compliance and standards through a harmonized set of controls within which all regulatory standards and best practices can be mapped. Currently, more than 400 individual international regulations, standards, and best practices have been mapped to the UCF, including Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, Visa CISP, Amex DSS, MasterCard EC Architecture Best Practices, Basel II, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, FERC, ISO 15489, and CobiT.

The UCF was created by Dorian Cougias and his research partner, Marcelo Halpern of the international law firm, Latham and Watkins. More information can be found at http://www.unifiedcompliance.com/.

About Network Frontiers

Since 1992, Network Frontiers has been at the forefront of IT best practices and author of numerous books, including The Compliance Book and the award-winning Backup Book: Disaster Recovery from Desktop to Data Center. The content and methodology of the Unified Compliance Framework is the result of Network Frontiers in-depth understanding of IT regulations and standards as well as real-world experience consulting for clients, publications, and vendors in the mission-critical IT arena. For more information, visit http://www.mcpressonline.com/administrator/www.netfrontiers.com.