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News Coverage


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.
SearchCIO.com (Dec 2008)

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.
SearchSecurity.com (Sep 2008)

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.
InfoWorld (Sep 2008)

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.
ITBusinessEdge (Sep 2008)

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?
Processor (Jul 2008)

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%.
Info Security Products (Apr 2008)

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.
Processor Magazine (Apr 2008)

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.
The Tech Herald (Apr 2008)

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.
The Linux Beacon (Apr 2008)

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.
SearchEnterpriseLinux.com (Apr 2008)

Symark Interview
Symark's V.P. of Product Marketing, Ellen Libenson, is interviewed by Mike D'Agostino of BankInfoSecurity at RSA Conference 2008.
RSA Podcast (Apr 2008) Podcast

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."
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (Mar 2008)

HotPick Access Control - Symark PowerBroker
Symark PowerBroker solves the dilemma of providing root access privileges to multiple users on Unix-based systems without compromising security.
Information Security (Oct 2007)

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).
SearchEnterpriseLinux.com (Sep 2007)

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.
Enterprise OpenSource Magazine (Apr 2007)

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.
itdefensemag.com (Apr 2007)

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
eSecurityPlanet (Mar 2007)

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.
Processor (Feb 2007)

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.
EbizQ (Feb 2007)

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.
Sarbanes Oxley Compliance Journal (Dec 2006)

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.
Computerworld (Sep 2006)

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.
Processor Magazine (Sep 2006)

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.
Linux Magazine (Sep 2006)

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.
ITC Institute (Aug 2006)

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.
Processor (Jul 2006)

Security On The Whole
A Holistic Approach Can Bring Better Lockdowns For Your Data Center
Processor (Jul 2006)

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.
Database Trends and Applications (Jun 2006)

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.
Network Computing UK (May 2006)

PowerKeeper from Symark
PowerKeeper is a worthy contender for adding another defense dimension to a well-run, well protected network.
Network Computing UK (Apr 2006)

RFP Toolkit: Stand out in the crowd
Today, when government agencies implement identity management systems, security is more likely their primary concern.
Washington Technology (Jan 2006)

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.
Government Computer News (Jan 2006)

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.
Security Wire Perspectives (Jan 2006)

PowerBroker 4.0 from Symark
Product Review
PowerBroker complements its security functions with a number of reporting and logging facilities.
Network Computing UK (Jan 2006)

Symark Powerbroker 4.0 Adds to Linux Security
New Logging Functionality and Advanced Report Writer Tighten Security and Provide Resource Control
Linux World (Nov 2005)

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.
Information Security (Aug 2005)

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?
CIO Today (Apr 2005)

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.
Linux World (Oct 2005)

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.
DMReview (Nov 2004)

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.
LinuxWorld (Oct 2004)

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.
ComputerUser (Oct 2004)

When the root is the problem
When access to root is surrendered, the user has full permission over the system.
SC Magazine (Apr 2004)

The Challenge of the Linux Audit
One problem identified during Linux audits is that too many people know the root password...
LinuxWorld (May 2004)

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.
Federal Computer Week (Apr 2004)

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.
Network World Fusion (Dec 2003)

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.
eWeek Enterprise News & Reviews (Nov 2003)

Keep Root Privilege Under Control
[PowerBroker] provides granular control of admin access for *nix systems.
Information Security Magazine (Oct 2003)

Admins' "Dirty Little Secret"
System administrators possess the "keys to the kingdom"...
Information Security Magazine (Oct 2003)

I thought My Network was Secure
Learn tips on protecting your data and systems...
Technical Support Magazine (Sep 2003)

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.
Network Magazine (Nov 2003)

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...
IIA article on UNIX/Linux security audits (Oct 2003)

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...
FCW article on critical systems access (Jul 2003)

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.
ZDnet (Jun 2003)

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.
ComputerWorld article on internal security (May 2003)

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..."
SC Magazine (Jan 2003)

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...
Information Security Magazine (Nov 2002)

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."
SC Magazine (Jan 2002)

Spotlight on Security: Sky Radio interview with Symark Chairman Bob Sommers
Real Audio | mp3 | MS Word transcript


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