Seeking to take advantage of the 16,000-plus Microsoft partners gathered in Houston for the Worldwide Partner Conference – at least 15.990 of whom are apparently pissed off with the software giant’s tablet initiatives and plans – Xceedium has announced cloud support for Microsoft Office 365. Microsoft is a key player, said CEO Glenn Hazard. “We knew that we had to extend there to help the customers.”
The network security software and PIM vendor (Xsuite) protects against the risk of privileged users and their accounts. According to a recent study almost 90% of large enterprises either do not know or have grossly underestimated the magnitude of their privileged account security problem, while more than half of them share privileged passwords internally.
Through Xceedium’s partnerships with industry leaders like Amazon Web Services (AWS), VMware and now Microsoft, Xsuite helps government, financial services and other high-security enterprises accelerate cloud deployments by letting them monitor, record and audit everything privileged users do, said Hazard. The update, to be available by the end of July, will include protection for Microsoft online services including Office 365, Exchange, Lync and SharePoint, securing and auditing all privileged access to Microsoft online services.
Xceedium said a new report on Privileged Account Management technologies finds increased interest in PAM, with a growing focus on monitoring and session control capabilities. According to Gartner, this increased interest is driven largely by three factors: privileged users are a locus for advanced persistent threats, SCADA systems connected to the Internet, and insider attacks; continued regulatory and audit demands to mitigate risks posed by privileged accounts; and dissatisfaction with existing tools.
Last month the Enterprise Strategy Group reported that despite cyber-attackers increasingly targeting privileged accounts, organizations are still taking inefficient, tactical approaches to PAM that does little to prevent the escalation of APTs. Over half (59%) of enterprise organizations are certain or fairly certain they have been the target of an APT.
Hazard said the last few months have seen a big change in the market. “Privileged access management has been recognized as an issue.” And with this increased awareness, there’s been a significant change in terms of the sense of urgency. “Globally we find the customer base is highly motivated and paying a lot of attention… there is a head of steam that I think would surprise a lot of people.”
Xsuite for Microsoft Online Services highlights include:
-multi-factor authentication, including logical (PIV/CAC) smartcard access to federal agency systems as required under HSPD-12;
-separation of duties for administrative access;
-single sign-on using federated Active Directory or LDAP credentials – including SSO access from multiple clients (Windows, Mac, Unix);
-recording of privileged user sessions – for comprehensive audit and forensics and to simplify compliance with Federal Government Continuous Monitoring mandates;
-enforce and proxy privileged access through a US Federal Government Trusted Internet Connection (TIC); and,
-address dozens of new systems administrator control requirements found in the recently updated NIST Special Publication 800-53 (R4).