News
IT Weekly Roundup, May 5
From the business wires this week: a server password management app, .NET rules and Group Policy tools, an enterprise security report solution, and more.
Cloakware announced the availability of
Cloakware Server Password
Manager (CSPM) 2.5, a solution that automates the process of securely changing
server IDs and passwords. CSPM now offers: RSA SecurID authentication support;
a new Server Node-Locking feature for establishing and validating servers' physical
characteristics; authenticated release of credentials and scheduled automatic
updates for Unix privileged accounts; and the ability to update and release
LDAP stored credentials.
http://www.cloakware.com
Fair Isaac Corp. released the latest version of its rules management
solution for Microsoft .NET. Blaze Advisor 6.1 uses a proprietary rules
execution technology called Rete III for data and rules-intensive problems.
http://www.fairisaac.com
Special Operations Software released a new Active Directory Users and
Computers extension called Specops GPUpdate. The free downloadable tool
provides system administrators with the ability to update Group Policies in
the Active Directory Users and Computers user interface and the ability to restart
and wake up computers. http://www.specopssoft.com
[Click on image for larger view.] |
| Easily update Group Policies or
restart your computers with Specops GPUpdate. |
Scriptlogic Corp. Tuesday released Enterprise Security Reporter 3.0,
a compliance and security auditing solution that automates the generation of
turnkey and customized reports on Windows security across an enterprise. Upgrades
include a new discovery engine that is five times faster than the previous version,
the ability to centrally install and manage discovery engines on remote servers,
a "delta comparison" option for comparing snapshots of Active Directory
resources, and storing of reports in a central SQL database. http://www.scriptlogic.com
[Click on image for larger view.] |
| No dog-ate-my-report excuses with
Scriptlogic Enterprise Security Reporter's centralized SQL database
reports. |
Sun Microsystems Inc. announced Tuesday its Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS
Appliance, the first NAS solution based on the AMD Opteron processor model
252. It boasts a 55 percent increase in performance over the previous generation's
model, the company said in a statement. Other key features include iSCSI support
and is Microsoft Windows Hardware (WHQL) certified, real-time anti-virus support
and certified for multiple scanning engines, and write-once-read-many (WORM)
functionality. http://www.sun.com/emrkt/nas/
In Microsoft news, the company shipped
SP1 of its virtualization platform, Virtual Server 2005 R2. The
highlight of the beta is support for hardware virtualization in both Intel and
AMD chips. Vista, unfortunately, isn't expected to be as punctual, according
to analyst firm Gartner's
predicted timeframe of between March and June 2007 -- a couple months
behind Microsoft's publicized release date in January.
And not that Microsoft really needs its online advertising unit, adCenter,
to recoup the $70
million lost to California over antitrust charges or its stock valuation
with its 11
percent dive last Friday, but it sure wouldn't hurt if its consumer
units, like MSN, started making money instead of losing it. Integrating MSN
Search into the next version of Internet Explorer could do just the trick,
but Google
doesn't think it's a good idea (for it, most likely). Of course, the
easiest solution would be to just buy
out a market leader like Yahoo -- which isn't unreasonable, given MSN's
new head -- former Ask.com CEO Steve Berkowitz -- had a hand in over 40 acquisitions
in his career.
But then again, maybe money isn't such a big deal since Bill
doesn't particularly enjoy being the richest person in the world.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company also started shipping Monday a packaged
solution for third parties to offer hosted application services over
the Internet.