KACE, the leading systems management appliance company, today announced a partnership with Lumension Security, a global leader in security management solutions, to provide KACE customers enterprise-class patch management capabilities within its comprehensive, easy-to-use, and affordably priced appliances. By embedding Lumension's award-winning PatchLink assessment and remediation technology into the KBOX Systems Management Appliance, KACE can now offer its customers access to the industry's leading patch management engine, as well as the world's largest vulnerability metadata database.

"This partnership mutually benefits KACE and Lumension," said Marty Kacin, KACE president, CTO, and co-founder. "Lumension further expands its market reach by extending the same powerful patch and remediation engine used in PatchLink Update to a more comprehensive systems management appliance within the KBOX. In addition, KACE dramatically enhances the KBOX's patching capabilities through more robust, heterogeneous, and timely patch management support from the recognized industry leader in vulnerability assessment and remediation. For KBOX customers, this partnership makes the all-in-one leading systems management appliance even more dynamic when it comes to protecting their IT environment."

By embedding Lumension's PatchLink technology in to the award-winning KBOX Systems Management Appliance, KACE helps medium enterprises further realize enterprise-class scale and patch management capabilities at a much lower cost than software-only systems management packages. For system administrators, the partnership not only provides them access to the most comprehensive set of systems management activities in an appliance, but also offers the ability to drive all related activities - from deployment to retirement - from a single, easy-to-use appliance, user interface, and agent, thereby increasing efficiency and reducing the burden of having to login in to multiple systems and learning to use multiple user interfaces, thus greatly improving efficiency.

Lumension's PatchLink assessment and remediation engine, embedded within the KACE KBOX Systems Management Appliance, is the same proven technology embedded in Lumension's PatchLink Update, which enables organizations to manage the entire vulnerability management lifecycle through broad application and platform support, rapid vulnerability assessment and remediation, scalability, and unmatched accuracy and audit.  In addition, Lumension's technology offers the industry's only patented Fingerprinting Technology that provides highly accurate and efficient assessment and monitoring of security updates. PatchLink Update is used in over 4,000 organizations worldwide to continuously monitor the network to ensure all desktops, servers, laptops, and other systems are patched and in compliance with corporate policies.

According to a recent survey by King Research, learning to effectively use multiple UIs is a leading obstacle to efficient systems management. In fact, IT organizations report a large number of disparate user-interfaces (six on average) are in use for systems and security management, which creates obvious user challenges in learning and using the tools effectively.

KBOX Patch Management features the following enhancements:
- Lumension's patented Fingerprinting Technology to ensure the highest level of accuracy in the detection of security vulnerabilities.
- World's largest vulnerability metadata database, including support for Windows and Non-Windows operating systems and applications.
- New easy-to-use user interface to efficiently schedule, manage, and report on the detection and deployment of patches.

"Patching and remediation remain critical to protecting valuable IT resources and closing security holes that could put critical data and systems at risk," said Rich Hlavka, senior vice president of Business Development at Lumension Security. "By integrating our policy-based, best-of-breed patching and remediation technology into the powerful KBOX appliance, we are empowering organizations to cost-effectively manage and control their valuable IT resources, while protecting networks against increasing threats.  In addition, this partnership allows KACE to provide the medium enterprise the IT prowess and agility usually reserved for much larger companies."

"We are thrilled to hear about this new alliance," said Michael Williams, director of IT for Dexter School. "We already benefit from KACE's highly innovative appliances for addressing our unique software deployment challenges. With the addition of Lumension PatchLink, we will now have instant access to the world's largest patch repository all through a single user interface, conveniently embedded within our KBOX appliance."