IT Security & Access Control

Strengthen IT security with Active Directory-centric access control and policy enforcement for UNIX, Linux and Mac systems and applications

The Challenge

One of the most difficult questions asked of IT security managers in cross-platform environments is: Can you prove which users have access to a specific business-critical system or application?

For Linux and UNIX systems in particular, access controls might be stored in insecure legacy systems such as NIS or managed locally system by system. Passwords to superuser accounts may be shared among many individuals. Or a single user may have multiple identities across systems.

The Centrify Solution

Centrify addresses this challenge by giving organizations a global view of access controls and user permissions, tied to a single, centrally managed Active Directory identity. With the Centrify Suite, you can:

• Associate all access rights and privileges on audited systems to individual Active Directory accounts
• Define logical sets of systems that can have their own authorized users, administrators, and security policies, with centralized reporting of who has access to what systems
• Implement role-based access controls and limit superuser privileges to just the set of commands they need to perform their jobs
• Add additional layers of security by isolating and protecting systems holding sensitive information.
• Capture detailed logs of all user actions, and system responses, to monitor for suspicious activity
• Globally enforce consistent security and configuration policies (via Windows Group Policy) across a heterogeneous enterprise

Learn More

Next Steps

3-Part Webinar Series What Gartner Says About Using Active Directory for Centralized Authentication, Auditing and SSO

And when RIM calculated ROI for an internally developed application [to authenticate Red Hat, Solaris and HP systems through Active Directory], systems architect Ian Brown said it became evident that it would be too challenging and expensive. What RIM needed, he decided, was a third-party application that worked out of the box. He said they found it in Mountain View, Calif.-based Centrify Corp.'s DirectControl. "Obviously RIM is a publicly traded company, so when the SOX auditors were looking at the access control to our systems, [we] were already covered with Centrify," Brown said. "Essentially, we could just print off a DirectControl report and say these people had access to this Linux system and when." With DirectControl, Brown could instantaneously produce this login documentation. He could then correlate that information to any maintenance ticket ever generated at RIM. Before DirectControl, Brown estimated his staff of six spent dozens of hours each week on local server administration - work they now complete in seconds.

Jack Loftus
SearchEnterpriseLinux
March 20, 2007