Quest Software Introduces the Next Generation of Active Directory Bridge Technology

We officially announced the 4.0 release of Quest Authentication Services today:

Quest Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: QSFT) introduces the next generation of Active Directory Bridge Technology with the newest version of Quest Authentication Services. This patented technology allows Unix, Linux, and Mac systems to act as full citizens within Active Directory by enabling administrators to extend the authentication, authorization and administration infrastructure of Active Directory to the rest of the enterprise.
New benefits of Quest Authentication Services include:

Auditing and Alerting

• Enables administrators to audit, report and alert on users who make changes to critical Unix data stored in Active Directory
• Gives full visibility and change alerting into who made changes, to what, when, where, and even why

One-time Password Authentication

• Provides an additional layer of out-of-the-box security requiring Active Directory users to use a one-time password to authenticate to any and all Quest Authentication Services-supported Unix systems
• Integrations include two-factor group policy support, and hardware and software tokens

Web Console

• Ties identity related tasks together for a centralized point of identity management for Unix that can be run from any Unix, Linux, Windows, or Mac platform, and any of the most common browsers
• Provides administrators with simplified deployments, expands management to local Unix users and groups, and offers granular reports on key data and attributes with easy-to-use access over many of the deeper functions only available through Authentication Services

Advanced Group Policy Management

• Provides macro support, which enables a single GPO to be re-used across multiple Unix systems
• Offers additional Mac OS X Group Policy support

Enhanced Privileged Account Management

• Provides control  over security initiatives to determine which users can access which system, and what elevated rights they have in Unix systems

If you're interested in taking a look at QAS 4.0 you can download your trial version here:

http://www.quest.com/common/registration.aspx?RequestDefID=13395

Technorati Tags: QSFT,Quest Software,Vintela,Quest Authentication Services,security,Unix user management,Group Policy,Active Directory,identity management,privileged account management,MSFT,Microsoft,strong authentication

Deploying QAS remotely – no more sneaker net!

One of the things that QAS customers will appreciate in the new Quest Identity Manager for Unix console is that QIMU can be used to deploy the QAS agent on *nix box remotely. No more need to script, visit or otherwise figure out how to deploy the agent. In addition to remotely installing the agent you also have the ability to check the Active Directory readiness of the targeted machine. This really simplifies the installation of the agent by double-checking all of the settings on that remote host to ensure that QAS can be successfully deployed and started.

I’ve already heard from a number of customers who have used QIMU to deploy, test and put QAS into production all without technical help from a consultant!

Technorati Tags: QSFT,Quest Software,QAS,Vintela,Quest Authentication Services,identity management,Unix,Linux,Unix user management,Linux user management,Active Directory,MSFT

CA takes cloud to new levels of fluffiness!

This caught my eye today: CA announced that they are executing on their cloud strategy with IAM to and from the cloud. So I decided to look through their press release and associated white papers and was both underwhelmed and amazed with the new height of cloud fluffiness that has been achieved. I would like to award their public relations team and external PR agency medals and trophies on the great, fluffy job they did. Was it done because you had to announce something at the Catalyst conference?

Today’s announcement includes the availability of new CA Identity Manager capabilities that extend identity management to cloud applications; it highlights how a customer has leveraged the CA SiteMinder portfolio to control access to its SaaS applications; and it features how CA Technologies is providing IAM as a service from the cloud.

What are these new capabilities I asked? I started trolling around the website and looking at various documents searching on the word “cloud”. What I came up with was that CA supports provisioning connectors to Salesforce.com. You can watch a demo of this incredible fluffiness here: http://www.ca.com/media/datacenter-of-the-future/secure1.swf

So, CA can provision to Salesforce.com. Congratulations guys! Job well done!! Is there any value add above provisioning and de-provisioning? Something that would actually be more than just adding or deleting users? Anything? Anything?

With a flashback to the famous “Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?” scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off I recorded this…

Technorati Tags: identity management,cloud computing,salesforce.com,provisioning

Simplifying Unix User Management and Lifecycle

You can tell when I get super busy with my day job as my blog posts slow down. In fact, I’ve been so busy and traveling so much that I had to miss the Cloud Identity Summit last week – which I really wanted to attend – and I skipped The Burton Group Catalyst conference this week. However, I did get a picture of our Catalyst hospitality suite sent to me. It was Sinatra themed – check it out:

Earlier this week Quest announced the release of Quest Unix Identity Manager. This is a new product for us and congratulations to the team that worked on QIMU. They really did a tremendous job. QIMU is a Java-based application that works from any browser and enables a Unix administrator to discover Unix servers and manage the user (/etc/passwd) and group (/etc/group) files on all the discovered machines. The best part is that QIMU is free. You can download it from http://www.freeunixiam.com or any of the popular shareware or freeware sites that are available on the internet. QIMU is also the new administration console for Quest Authentication Services 4.0. The only difference is with QAS 4.0 there are additional screens or functions that are enabled.

So whether you use QIMU just for Unix user lifecycle management – for free – or to help manage your Active Directory integrated users via QAS 4.0 I hope you find QIMU useful.

Let me know what you think of QIMU!

Technorati Tags: Quest Software,QSFT,Unix,Linux,Mac,Active Directory,Identity management,user management,/etc/passwd,/etc/group,Quest Authentication Services,QAS,Vintela,Jackson Shaw,IAM,IDM