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Analysis: Change Management Technology: Page 6 of 6

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Kevin Novak is the COO and Mike Tyk is the director of consulting services for Chicago-based security consultancy Neohapsis.

The key to making change work for, rather than against, your organization is to remember that modifying your infrastructure should never be an ad hoc, on-the-fly operation. Whether you use a three-ring binder, a blogging app or a sophisticated suite of software, you must manage change--or it will bite you. The two change-management applications, from BMC Software and Computer Associates, we profile here represent ways to automate this all-important process. But before you implement one of these beasts, you must have policies and teams in place to ensure that changes are appropriately tested, authorized and documented, and never performed by only one person. This is the only way to keep your data safe--and stay on the good side of federal regulators.