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Symark Unveils PowerADvantage, a New Integrated Authentication and Configuration Solution

(Aprl 02, 2008)-- Symark International, developer of the PowerSeries information security solutions for managing privileged account access, announced the general availability of PowerADvantage, a new integrated authentication and configuration solution that extends Active Directory's centralized authentication, authorization, account access, policy enforcement and infrastructure
management functionality to UNIX and Linux systems. PowerADvantage reduces administration costs, improves security and supports compliance efforts by allowing organizations to centrally manage disparate UNIX/Linux user identifications, authentication, security policies and automatic deployment of configuration settings through Microsoft Active Directory, creating a unified, single login environment.

"PowerADvantage naturally evolved from Symark's many years of experience providing non-intrusive access control solutions to heterogeneous UNIX and Linux data centers. We are constantly working with our customers to identify and meet their security and compliance needs, and the ability to extend Active Directory's functionality to Linux and UNIX systems is appealing to many organizations," said Bob Farber, chief operating officer at Symark International. "Using PowerADvantage to leverage Active Directory's identity and authentication features for the UNIX/Linux environment can provide real benefits for end users and administrators. We have received nothing but positive feedback from those organizations that were involved in our Beta program, especially regarding its seamless integration with Symark's PowerBroker. This combination augments the rich policy language in PowerBroker and leverages Microsoft Group Policy functionality to provide a central point of policy that can be automatically distributed to the UNIX and Linux systems, saving many hours and ensuring consistency in security policies throughout the enterprise."

PowerADvantage implements an agent on UNIX and Linux machines that communicates with Active Directory's domain controllers. During the installation of the PowerADvantage agent, the UNIX or Linux host is joined to the domain and the host is configured to route authentication requests through the PowerADvantage agent. This allows the PowerADvantage agent to communicate with the Active Directory domain controllers to process authentication requests and access the Group Policy Objects used for configuration management.

After installation, the computer object for each UNIX and Linux host can be moved to different organizational units in the Active Directory hierarchy, changing which set of Group Policy Objects apply to that host. The PowerADvantage Context of each host can also be changed, which will immediately change the login configuration for all Active Directory-based users logging in to that host. Both of these changes can be performed without re-booting the host or re-starting the PowerADvantage agent. Additionally, the PowerADvantage agent is configured by Group Policy, so any changes in the configuration of the agents can be performed through Group Policy without the need to visit each individual host.

PowerADvantage Key Features include - Detailed Compliance Reports--PowerADvantage helps ensure that all activities performed on UNIX and Linux systems are written to the proper Active Directory logs. It produces audit reports required by Sarbanes-Oxley, PCI DSS andHIPAA , providing a comprehensive trail for auditors. This simplifies the compliance process and reduces overall audit costs, and it allows for the more rapid discovery of anomalies as part of a sound security posture.

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