Symark is the leading provider
of information security solutions for managing
privileged account access within heterogeneous
UNIX, Linux and Windows environments. Symark
executives and products are often featured in
articles and reviews in business and computer
trade press. The following links provide a review
of recent press coverage about the company and
products.
Employee layoffs pose security risk
if systems access not disabled
Former systems administrator Jeff Nielsen has a message for CIOs in this season of horrific employee layoffs and hard times: Beware orphaned accounts. A study from Symark International Inc., a maker of systems access management solutions, suggests that orphaned accounts -- user accounts that remain open after an employee leaves a company -- are a significant security risk at many corporations.
Bring Unix, Linux and Mac under the
Active Directory umbrella
Enterprises don't just run Windows machines. Critical servers and applications run on various flavors of Unix and Linux. You may have marketing people on Macs, and C-level executives carrying those trendy Mac laptops. One obvious answer is to leverage Active Directory across platforms.
Angry IT workers: A ticking time bomb?
IT workers are mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore. What can you do to keep things from reaching the point of no return? It was 9:30 on the morning of March 4, 2002, and something was terribly wrong at the offices of PaineWebber UBS. Computers in branches all over the country began showing disc errors. A logic bomb buried deep within the machines had wiped their hard drives clean, preventing 17,000 brokers from making trades.
Tracking Privileged Users Is a No-Brainer
Carl Weinschenk spoke with Ellen Libenson, vice president of product marketing, and Jeff Nielsen, senior product manager for Symark. Libenson and Nielsen discussed insider security in light of the case of Terry Childs, a network administrator in San Francisco who locked everybody but himself out of the municipal system.
Little Back Doors
When employees leave the company, what happens to their user accounts? Chances are they become orphans. According to a recent survey conducted by Symark (www.symark.com) of more than 850 security, IT, HR, and C-level executives across all industries, 42% of companies have no idea how many orphaned accounts exist within their organization, and 30% say they have no procedure in place to locate orphaned accounts. So what’s the problem?
Managing Insider Threat by Securing
Privileged Access
Symark focuses on solving the inherent security gaps in native UNIX, Linux and Windows operating systems. In business for over 20 years, Symark has hundreds of thousands of licenses in use throughout the Global 2000 with a customer retention rate of over 90%.
Active Directory, Meet Unix & Linux
PowerADvantage is an integrated authentication and configuration utility from Symark that brings Unix and Linux systems all the benefits of Active directory, including centralized authentication, account access, policy enforcement, and infrastructure management.
RSA: Central management for IT shops security
that covers it all
Symark offers something unique to help with ID management and policy enforcement. The Power series, PowerBroker, PowerKeeper, and PowerADvantage, are three tools that can help manage policies and identification in environments that use multiple platforms.
Symark Tackles Tough Access Control Problems
The majority of security breaches are perpetrated by internal users, such as systems administrators with powerful user profiles that give them open access to the servers they manage. Symark International is one of the software vendors helping companies control internal access to popular servers. This week the company launched its newest product: PowerADvantage.
Symark's security access tool bridges Linux,
Active Directory
There's a downside to adding Linux or Unix servers to a Windows shop: These orphan machines lie outside the protective umbrella of the centralized user authentication and authorization controls of Microsoft Active Directory. The result? Multiple user identifications and logins, higher risk of errors and security loopholes, and of course, more work for system administrators.
Symark Interview
Symark's V.P. of Product Marketing, Ellen Libenson, is interviewed by Mike D'Agostino of BankInfoSecurity at RSA Conference 2008.
Passport Breaches Fuel Concerns
Experts said insiders often are neglected when agencies set procedures. "There's been so much emphasis on hacking from the outside; it's the people inside who are just as much of a risk." Symark PowerBroker solves the dilemma of providing root access privileges to multiple users on Unix-based systems without compromising security.
Symark Joins Crowded Cross-platform Management
Field
Agoura Hills, Calif.-based Symark Software recently joined a long list of vendors offering a cross-platform authentication and configuration application for managing Linux and Unix servers using Microsoft Active Directory (AD).
Trust But Verify
Some years ago, a small manufacturing firm was hijacked by its IT employees. They didn't use weapons, but they did commit murder: They killed the business. Unfortunately, they were aided and abetted by the company's own lax security policies.
Eliminating Insider Threats
Everyone wants to think well of the employees and colleagues to whom they trust the administration of mission-critical systems, but it is smarter to think about enforcing best security practices that close the door to temptation.
Controlling Access in Linux and UNIX Environments
One of the most common security challenges Linux and UNIX IT administrators face is how to effectively manage the root or super-user account. In an age of regulatory compliance and data privacy lawsand as more and more organizations elect to run mission-critical applications on UNIX and Linux systemscontrolling and auditing privileged account access is more crucial than ever
Identity & Access Management
With a continually changing lineup of faces comes the need for robust identity and access management to ensure that the network is open to authorized personnel and, just as importantly, closed to those who shouldnt be there.
Keeping the Fox Out of the Hen House
Some years ago, a small manufacturing firm was hijacked by its IT employees. They didnt use any weapons, but they did commit murder: They killed the business. Unfortunately, they were aided and abetted by the companys own lax security policies. The firm had ignored the best practice of segregating duties.
Too Much of a Good Thing
To meet the requirements outlined by Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), many organizations spend a great deal of their resources building virtually impenetrable walls around the perimeter of their network. The problem, however, is that these organizations fail to recognize the threat from within and the need to create a secure access control infrastructure from the inside out.
IT Can Play Big Brother
Sysadmins are also the ones who launch the most insider attacks, according to the "Insider Threat Study" released jointly last year by the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team.
Security Options Abound What's Right For
Your SME?
When it comes to security, data center and IT managers not only have to create long-term strategies and lock down multiple layers of data, they also have to navigate the wealth of choices available in the marketplace.
Linux Security Solutions Provider Symark
Experiences Rapid Increase In Sales Data Privacy
And Regulatory Compliance Drives 74 Percent
Increase Of First-Half 2006 Sales
Preventing unauthorized access to proprietary information and systems as well as complying with SOX, PCI DSS and other federal regulations are top-of-mind issues for security administrators at organizations across all industries.
A Sense of Entitlement
Up to 60 percent of fraud is perpetrated by employees of the victim company, often because the wrong people have access to tempting data. Here are four tips for limiting access to sensitive data and thereby limiting the potential for misuse.
Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
According to a recent study conducted by the U.S. Secret Service and Carnegie Mellon University, so-called "trusted users" are responsible for a large number of sabotage attacks and unauthorized access of proprietary information.
Security On The Whole
A Holistic Approach Can Bring Better Lockdowns For Your Data Center
Data Security Becomes a Top Priority
Information and data security is top of mind for everyone right now. Government regulations and news headlines about company data breaches are driving IT investment in security and keeping chief security officers up at night. Companies are increasingly viewing data as a corporate asset of critical value and looking for solutions to help automate security processes.
PowerPassword 3.2 from Symark
Adding users to a new system when they already have established accounts on existing systems can be difficult, and differences between account implementations can leave systems vulnerable to attack.
PowerKeeper from Symark
PowerKeeper is a worthy contender for adding another defense dimension to a well-run, well protected network.
RFP Toolkit: Stand out in the crowd
Today, when government agencies implement identity management systems, security is more likely their primary concern.
Identity management systems can help agencies
meet security mandates
Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12, issued in August 2004, requires federal agencies to adopt standard ways of securing physical access to buildings as well as logical access to information systems. And although not covered by HSPD-12, many state and local governments are moving toward IDMS as well, for the security and efficiencies it brings.
Passwords Still the Weakest Link
Former or disgruntled staff commit up to 70% of security breaches, according to Washington-based Diligence LLC, a risk-management company. Often these insiders exploit lax password management policies that provide systems administrators, computer programmers (often offshore contract workers) and others access to service account and administrative passwords, even long after they leave the company. Not only are these common passwords often shared, but also they are infrequently changed.
PowerBroker 4.0 from Symark
Product Review PowerBroker complements its security functions with a number of reporting and logging facilities.
Symark Powerbroker 4.0 Adds to Linux Security
New Logging Functionality and Advanced Report Writer Tighten Security and Provide Resource Control
Symark Software's PowerKeeper 1.4
Administrative passwords are the "keys to the kingdom," but securely and efficiently managing them can be challenging. Organizations are known to keep paper copies of administrative passwords in a safe or an encrypted MS Excel spreadsheets--cumbersome and unreliable practices. Symark Software's PowerKeeper 1.4 addresses this problem with a secure, automated device for managing administrative passwords.
Big Lesson for IT Hackers
Companies are beginning to realize that there may be internal security threats from their employees, but what about the workers that are sent packing?
Designing and Implementing a Security Architecture
Protecting information from external threats such as hackers, viruses, and spam, as well as governmental regulation requirements (SOX, HIPAA, NISPOM, etc.), are driving IT purchases beyond ROI as C-level executives seek to assure shareholders (and themselves) that assets are secure within the company complex. Viewed as todays growth market, many software/hardware/service companies are creating offerings to mitigate perceived risk or actual liability.
Protecting Systems from the Inside
Many systems administrators have been faced with the reality of security vulnerabilities in their Linux systems. If they are fortunate, they have become alerted beforehand, via one of their favorite security vulnerability sources (see URL list at the end of this article). If not, they have discovered that those cost-effective Linux systems dropped them into hot water with the internal security team, audit team or both.
Planning for Enterprise Linux Security Before
Deployment
As Linux continues its ascent in enterprise computing, major vendor support for business-critical applications is evolving to keep pace. Among the challenges enterprises and vendors face is the need for advanced security and accountability for root account users, application administration accounts, and non-privileged users as well.
Get ready for the penguin: How to know when
its time to go Linux
With IBM putting its Linux campaign in full swing, and grassroots organizations putting on "Freedom Software Day," it seems open source is all the rage. But just because the operating system is becoming more popular doesn't mean it lacks controversy.
When the root is the problem
When access to root is surrendered, the user has full permission over the system.
The Challenge of the Linux Audit
One problem identified during Linux audits is that too many people know the root password...
IRS to Use Symark Software
Symark's PowerPassword will be used to strengthen the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information stored on the agency's Unix servers.
When a Security Tool Gains a New Purpose
...this system administration software [PowerBroker] ended up playing an even bigger role as a tool that the legal supervisors could use interactively to train debt collectors.
Securing Network from Within
The system [PowerBroker] gives administrators the ability to grant limited root access to users on an as-needed basis and provides a comprehensive audit trail.
Keep Root Privilege Under Control
[PowerBroker] provides granular control of admin access for *nix systems.
Admins' "Dirty Little Secret"
System administrators possess the "keys to the kingdom"...
I thought My Network was Secure
Learn tips on protecting your data and systems...
Making Peace with Passwords
Password management consumes a huge amount of time in today's typical enterprise help desk...Fortunately, password management products can help ease this burden.
Is a UNIX or Linux Security Audit in Your
Future?
Ongoing audits and compliance testing play a critical role in keeping UNIX and Linux platforms secure...
Los Alamos County shores up security
After researching security and access authorization technologies, she [Laura Gonzales, Los Alamos County Systems Manager] said she settled on California-based Symark Software's PowerBroker software...
Buffer-Overflow Attacks: Perimeter Defenses
No Panacea
When the attack gets to a privileged machine, your firewall does you no good. Limiting privileges can limit the scope of the attack.
Plan for Success by Protecting from the Inside
IT practices sometimes circumvent security where they are most vulnerable -- from within the network by trusted users and administrators.
Review of Symark PowerBroker
One of the biggest problems with Unix is that it was never designed with security in mind. Over the years, a number of products have come to market to solve this problem, but few have addressed the problem of delegating/restricting access to individual resources...PowerBroker seeks to rectify this situation..."
Review of Symark PowerBroker
In the Unix/Linux universe, root is king. As any hacker knows, once youve identified a user with administrative privileges and gain access to his account, you can pretty much do anything. Symark, makers of Unix/Linux management software, brings order to this chaos with Power-Broker, an access control system that restricts individuals privileges on admin accounts...
Review of Symark PowerPassword
PowerPassword replaces standard UNIX logins with a manageable, enforceable login application of its own. PowerPassword plays to all of the strengths of using passwords for security by removing all of the weaknesses."
Spotlight on Security: Sky Radio interview with
Symark Chairman Bob Sommers
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