Today, IT security breaches are a growing problem
that can have significant operational, financial, and
compliance ramifications. Often the greatest threat is
close at hand—increasingly the breaches are coming
from an organization’s own employees, as evidenced
by the growing number of insider incidents. According
to a recent Computer Emergency Response Team
(CERT) study, more than 80 percent of insider breaches
were traced to users with privileged access to systems
within the internal infrastructure.
For many companies, the privileged identities that
provide administrators with wide-ranging access to
systems, applications, and databases are a weak
point in internal security. ,the stored The risk comes
in part from the fact that these identities are meant
to be shared by many users and are generic in nature,
so systems don’t track who is logging into them.
Additionally, are an enterprise may have tens of thousands of them—they are found on virtually every
piece of hardware and software in an organization.
Furthermore, these accounts are nearly impossible
to disable, because they provide the main method for
managing these systems.
To help companies address this problem, Cyber-Ark offers its award-winning Enterprise Password
Vault (EPV), which provides a centralized solution to
secure and manage all of an organization’s privileged
accounts—even application identities embedded in
scripts and connectors. Part of a suite of Cyber-Ark
security products, EPV creates a multilayered information security infrastructure that helps companies
efficiently personalize, manage, and automate privileged accounts while providing the security, flexibility,
detailed tracking, and identity-auditing capabilities that
are typically missing from today’s various encryption-only solutions.
Cyber-Ark is a member of the Oracle PartnerNet work.
EPV integrates out of the box with Oracle Identity
Management, enabling the Oracle solution to be the
central point for managing and provisioning all identities, including both traditional end-user targets and the
privileged administrative and application identities used
by network administrators.
In addition, EPV complements the Oracle Database
Vault, enhancing the management and personalization
capabilities of database administrators. In essence,
says Adam Bosnian, vice president of products, strategy, and sales at Cyber-Ark, “The solution enhances
security by acting as a front end to Oracle’s products,
so an organization knows who is accessing their data-
bases and systems, while improving auditability, workflow automation, security, and manageability.”
At the heart of EPV is Cyber-Ark’s patented and
ICSA Labs–validated secure digital vault technology,
which provides high levels of security for privileged
passwords—or any type of highly sensitive information—both at rest and during transmission. Digital vault
technology includes a Federal Information Processing
Standard 140-2–validated cryptography module (with
advanced encryption standards encryption), and meets
payment card industry requirements. “We create an
electronic safe haven in the network so that regardless
of the overall network or security surrounding it, the
privileged accounts are always secure and available,
eliminating the traditional tradeoff between accessibility and security,” says Bosnian.
SSppeecciaiallAAddvveerrtt isisiningg SSeecctt ioi oonn
Building on this foundation, the EPV solution also provides
• A Web-based interface that provides a single console for accessing and managing privileged accounts
throughout the enterprise
• The Central Policy Manager, a module that automates
and instantly changes passwords for the thousands of
databases, servers, network devices, and applications
within an infrastructure
• Auditing compliance capabilities, such as built-in entitlement reports and the ability to track time, date, personalized identity, changes, and logging history
• The scalability to manage tens of thousands of privileged administrative and application accounts across
multiple networks and geographies
• Seamless integration with Oracle Identity Management,
providing a complete solution for managing all the identities within an organization
EPV supports an exceptionally wide variety of platforms, including UNIX, Linux, AS/400, MVS, and Microsoft
Windows operating systems; Oracle and other databases;
firewalls, network devices, and routers; and key systems
such as LDAP, Active Directory, and more. The solution’s
unique architecture enables companies to dynamically
support any other third-party or in-house systems, devices,
and applications.
With EPV, Oracle users can enhance security, reduce
risk, and improve compliance while reducing the workloads associated with managing privileged identities.
“Companies need to have this kind of rock-solid control
over their most critical accounts and systems,” says
Bosnian. “Together, Oracle and Cyber-Ark help them
meet that challenge.”
