Active Directory
Active Directory
Active Directory is an implementation of LDAP directory services by Microsoft for use in Windows environments. Active Directory allows administrators to assign enterprise wide policies, deploy programs to many computers, and apply critical updates to an entire organization. An Active Directory stores information and settings relating to an organization in a central, organized, accessible database. Active Directory networks can vary from a small installation with a few hundred objects, to a large installation with millions of objects.
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Active Directory Related Products
The GB-Ware is a software firewall powered by GNAT Box System Software certified to ICSA 4.0 Corporate criteria. The GNAT Box System Software was designed from the ground up as an integrated firewall system with interoperability of features, easy installation and remote management. We supply the OS and firewall software - you supply the hardware.
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BlackShield ID Server software is a strong authentication plat-form that simplifies the implementation, management, con-trol and provisioning tasks related to protecting a network from compromised passwords and unauthorised access. It can be used to replace static passwords or add an additional layer of protection just about anywhere a password is used.
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Genesis 2.6 is RKeyTec's flagship product. An expert system that optimises Microsoft Active Directory implementations allowing organisations to increase the security and ROI their entire Windows Infrastructure.
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Protect your desktops, laptops, servers, storage appliances, and smartphones - on and off the network - with an innovative blend of world-class anti-malware and in-the-cloud protection from Trend Micro Smart Protection Network. New File Reputation frees endpoint resources by moving pattern files into the cloud. And Web Reputation blocks access to malicious websites. A flexible plug-in architecture, new Device Control, HIPS functionality, virtualization, and extended platform support all help lower management costs and increase flexibility.
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Lumension Device Control (formerly Sanctuary) enforces organisation-wide usage policies for removable devices, removable media, and data (such as read/write, encryption) using a whitelist. Lumension Device Control enables organisations to embrace productivity-enhancing tools while limiting the potential for data leakage and its impact.
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Connect Protect is an end point control solution that enables organisations to control the use of 'plug and play' devices and restrict USB stick usage. Connect Protect end point control protects organisations, by preventing unauthorised access to, and use of, external removeable devices and providing centrally managed audit trails for all connection events.
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Protect your desktops, laptops, servers, and smartphones - on and off the network - with an innovative blend of world-class anti-malware and in-the-cloud protection from Trend Micro Smart Protection Network. New File Reputation frees endpoint resources by moving pattern files into the cloud and Web Reputation blocks access to malicious websites. A flexible plug-in architecture, new Device Control, HIPS functionality, virtualization, and extended platform support all help lower management costs and increase flexibility and deliver industry-best protection from today's threats.
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Active Directory Related Product Families
RKeyTec is an expert systems house who specialise in optimising Microsoft Windows Infrastructure. RKeyTec enable organisations to implement and secure Active Directory at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods. Clients benefit from a mature Active Directory that raises the security of their entire Windows infrastructure while minimising cost of ownership.
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Active Directory Related Industry News
Security 2004: How it will shape up Even with growing security budgets and abundant technology choices, 2003 was a mixed year for information security professionals. Internet business processes, new technologies and more regulations combined to impose unique security concerns on overburdened security staffs. What's more, the year was punctuated by numerous malicious code attacks that led to business interruption, constant emergency activity and lots of overtime.
Security will remain a hot to......
[more] SurfControl buys anti-spyware tools Application security company Apreo has sold its anti-spyware technology and ideas for $6.8m Security company SurfControl is looking to claim a stake in the anti-spyware market. The London-based firm announced on Wednesday it had paid $6.8m (£3.5m) for application security company Apreo's anti-spyware technology. The technology is set to feature in SurfControl's Enterprise Threat Shield (SETS), which will go on sale in April.
"Spyware and phishing attacks are......
[more] Distributed Wireless Security Monitors - Time to Tighten the Wireless Net Network Computing perform an exhaustive review of these specialised overlay systems that provide wire-side and wireless rogue-device detection, RF interference and intrusion-detection capabilities as well as user and performance monitoring in the 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz ranges. Last time around, we evaluated the beta 4.0 release; now, just 15 months later, Enterprise has been upped to version 5.2. At first glance, the product lo......
[more] Websense to get into threat analysis and IP leakage Websense Inc's chief executive Gene Hodges has said the company is set to diversify next year with a new product for web threat analysis and another that will take it into the nascent segment for information leakage detection and prevention systems. The web filtering software vendor is best known for its content filtering software that blocks employees from accessing websites by category or keyword, or restricts surfing to particular parts of t......
[more] Patching an entire server farm I am new to the company where I work and responsible for the patch management process, before I started here there was none. Now I have implemented a patch management process, but we have a server farm of 500 Windows servers not connected to the Internet consisting of Windows 2000 and 2003 servers with various service packs. For these servers, I still have to see how to get up to date with the patches (some servers are missing patches as from up 2002). Now I......
[more] PatchLink Delivers Next-Generation Enterprise Ready Solution to Help Maintain Integrity of IT Environment PatchLink Update 6.4 Delivers Policy-Oriented Architecture to Protect and Manage Costs and Valuable IT Resources From Emerging Threats PatchLink Corporation, the global leader in security and vulnerability management solutions, today announced the availability of PatchLink Update 6.4, a policy-oriented architecture that enables organizations to cost-effectively manage and control their valu......
[more] IT and compliance: A risk management 'odd couple' Handling compliance and risk have become inescapable elements of the modern CIO's role as they strive to ensure the business can forge ahead while not exposing areas of weakness or potential liability. Danny Bradbury explains the dilemma... Compliance can be a daunting word for IT managers. Ultimately, it's about managing risk exposure at a broad level. So what can IT directors do to satisfy the rest of the board, especially given that regulation......
[more] Microsoft patches 11 bugs Microsoft has issued patches for 11 security vulnerabilities, five of them critical, in Windows, Office and the .Net Framework. The most serious of the batch is MS07-039, said security analysts who, unlike last month, had no trouble naming that critical hole as the one which should be patched first. "By far, this is the top of the list this month," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security. MS07-039 patches a pair of bugs......
[more] Sobering Realities of Enforcing NAC: Top 5 Challenges that Solutions Need to Address Network Access Control (NAC, a.k.a. Network Admission Control), has generated a lot of enthusiasm, and correspondingly, a large number of corporate initiatives to address a rapidly evolving network security challenge. NAC was developed to ensure the security of endpoints connecting to the corporate network, which has become an increasingly important issue given the large number of external users, mobile systems......
[more] Microsoft to release five fixes on Patch Tuesday Microsoft announced yesterday that it will release five security bulletins - one for a flaw deemed "critical" - next week as part of its September Patch Tuesday distribution. The critical flaw exists in Windows and can be exploited for remote code execution, according to Microsoft's advance notification.Four "important" patches will also be released. Two of the bulletins fix bugs allowing remote code execution in Visual Studio and MSN Me......
[more] That Wi-Fi network you thought was secure? it ain't Businesses using some of the more advanced methods for securing connections to Wi-Fi access points need to take a hard look at the configuration settings of client computers. So say researchers who have documented a simple way to impersonate trusted networks. The attack works on access points that use the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) in concert with Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP) or other so-called Extensible Authenticatio......
[more] Enterprises, Prepare for iTunes In his keynote address at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco today, June 9, Apple CEO Steve Jobs confirmed many of the rumors surrounding the next-generation iPhone. While we already knew about the software features of the iPhone 2.0 software (the SDK, App Store, Exchange ActiveSync and Cisco VPN client) from his announcements in March, this time Jobs confirmed that the new hardware will have a 3G radio, integrated GPS and a much more attractive......
[more] How secure is secure enough? If there is a Holy Grail in the information security industry, it surely is the answer to the question, "How secure is secure enough?" It's a question that many security managers have either avoided answering altogether or tried to quickly sidestep by throwing a fistful of mainly pointless operational metrics at anyone who cared to ask. But with a faltering economy beginning to put the squeeze on IT budgets, and security managers being asked to justify every dollar......
[more] Microsoft promises huge patch day next week Microsoft Corp. today said it will issue 11 security updates next week -- the same number it shipped in August when it pushed out the most patches in 18 months -- to fix bugs in Windows, Active Directory, Internet Explorer (IE), Office and Host Integration Server. Four of the 11 updates will be labeled "critical," Microsoft's highest threat ranking, with six pegged "important," the next-lowest rating, and one tagged as "mod......
[more] Microsoft reveals critical holes in Active Directory, mainframe gateway Microsoft Tuesday issued four critical patches to close 10 vulnerabilities, some on critical IT systems such as Active Directory. The platforms affected by the critical vulnerabilities include Active Directory, Internet Explorer, Host Integration Server and Excel. In all, Microsoft issued 11 patches (see complete list here). In addition to the four that were critical, six were listed as important and one as moderate. The pat......
[more] Microsoft to embed RSA data cop in Windows Microsoft is adopting technology from EMC's RSA security division for Windows to police data and prevent loss and theft of information. The companies announced Thursday Microsoft will license RSA's data loss prevention (DLP) engine for future versions of Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and "similar" products. Microsoft would not be drawn on whether the DLP engine will be built into Office or the forthcoming Windows 7. Office would be logical move g......
[more] Worm surge exploits Microsoft vulnerability Business systems are being attacked by a worm exploiting a known Microsoft vulnerability, IT security experts have warned. Both US-CERT and security organisation F-Secure have issued warnings, urging IT professionals to apply the Microsoft patch. The malware attacks the vulnerability outlined in MS08-067, a Windows Server service flaw that was patched in October. The worm launches a dictionary attack to attempt to crack user passwords, and uses server......
[more] Novell single sign-on adds SharePoint support Novell on Tuesday released a new version of its Access Manager authentication system that allows non-Windows directory users to more easily access Microsoft web-based products such as Microsoft Office SharePoint. The release of Novell Access Manager 3.1, with support for the WS-Federation standard, builds on a wide-ranging November 2006 deal between Novell and Microsoft. As part of that agreement, Novell and Microsoft said they would use the WS-Mana......
[more] New disk encryption standards could complicate data recovery When the world's largest disk-makers joined last week to announce a single standard for encrypting disk drives, the move raised questions among users about how to deal with full-disk encryption once it's native on all laptop or desktop computers. For example, what happens if a user loses a password -- essentially leaving the drive filled with data that can no longer be unencrypted? Or what if a drive becomes corrupted or damaged, the......
[more] Preventing data loss - what's needed Though there are plenty of tools to help businesses shore up data, the lack of policy standards makes the task more difficult than it should be, says Quocirca's Bob Tarzey. The UK's MPs may rue the day a disk listing details of their expenses was leaked to the Daily Telegraph from the House of Commons Fees Office earlier this year, but they were going to be made public at some point anyway, courtesy of the UK's Freedom of Information Act which the MPs themse......
[more] Security Manager's Journal: Better security for not quite everyone It's scary to think how much sensitive or even valuable information can be gleaned from an untended PC, even one whose user just walked away for a few minutes. That's the sort of thing that security managers fret about but the rest of the world hardly notices. And it's one of the reasons I'm on the verge of deploying a group policy to enforce a password-protected screen lock on every device used to log into my company's domain.......
[more] Security tips for large and small businesses Whether your business is a big fish or a small-fry home office, you can get hacked just the same, and the stakes are higher than a few canceled credit cards. Here are a few tips to protect your users and your networks--steps that even enterprise-class security specialists may slip up on. Know Who Might Be Targeted - and How and Why
With the recent news of attacks on US companies including Google, many business owners might be thinking, "That wouldn't......
[more] Palo Alto Networks tackles Facebook privacy Network security firm Palo Alto Networks has added tools to its firewall which it claims will make it easier for companies to lock down Facebook, specifically the privacy risks associated with its plug-ins. The company said that increasing enterprise use of Facebook makes it vital to ensure that it is being used securely, particularly concerning personal information being shared with third parties."The new default Facebook privacy settings are d......
[more] How many enterprise admins is too many? I'm often asked how many enterprise admins -- the most privileged users on a Windows network -- a company should have. The answer is straightforward enough: the bare minimum. Doling out that type of power willy-nilly is a great way to expose your systems to attacks. In fact, the No. 1 way to minimize overall security risk is to minimize the number of enterprise admins you have and how often they need to logon. The specific number depends on the operationa......
[more] Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals deploys Imprivata's OneSign Imprivata has announced that Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has become the new UK healthcare organisation to rollout its OneSign to provide access to medical applications via Single Sign-On (SSO) technology. The company said that the Foundation Trust has deployed SSO across 40 applications; and OneSign was implemented into the organisation's network infrastructure without requiring any changes to the Active Di......
[more] Gartner identifies cloud security risks, opportunities Organisations migrating applications to externally-hosted services face security challenges well beyond fears around data sovereignty, according to analyst group Gartner. Gartner analyst Andrew Walls told IT security professionals at the analyst's Sydney Symposium today that security is "in the midst of a transition in computing that mirrors when the internet kicked off." Traditional IT security processes inside the LAN, he said, a......
[more] Data breaches: 4 fundamental ways to shore up your defenses If you're like most IT professionals, you constantly feel as if you should be paying more attention to security. But it's tough to find the time, budget and staff to do the best job possible. Or is it? In its most recent, and rather depressing, report on data breaches, Verizon concluded that IT security had not improved much since its first report was published in 2008."This study always reminds us that our profession has the neces......
[more] Is a next-generation firewall in your future? The traditional port-based enterprise firewall, now looking less like a guard and more like a pit stop for Internet applications racing in through the often open ports 80 and 443, is slowly losing out to a new generation of brawny, fast, intelligent firewalls. The so called next-generation firewall (NGFW) describes an enterprise firewall/VPN that has the muscle to efficiently perform intrusion prevention sweeps of traffic, as well as have awareness......
[more] Leveraging Active Directory as your single source for authentication and authorization [This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter's approach.] Let's face it. Individuals with malicious intent are constantly crafting new ways to penetrate your IT environment. One of the most pervasive security threats today is the internal user with excessive privileges and access to critical data.......
[more] When trusted IT pros go bad It's a CIO's worst nightmare: a call from the Business Software Alliance, saying that some of the software your company uses might be pirated. You investigate and find that not only is your software illegal, it was sold to you by a company secretly owned and operated by none other than your own IT systems administrator, who's been a trusted employee for seven years. When you start digging into the admin's activities, you find a for-pay porn website he's been running o......
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