|
| Sentrigo Brings End-User Accountability to Enterprise Databases with Hedgehog IDentifier |
11 December 2007
New Hedgehog Enterprise add-on module associates database actions with individual users in pooled connection environments
WOBURN, Mass.—December 11, 2007—Sentrigo, Inc., an innovator in database security software, today announced Hedgehog IDentifier™, a new module designed for Hedgehog Enterprise™ customers. Based on patent-pending technology, Hedgehog IDentifier allows security professionals and auditors to identify the individual application users who perform actions in the database in pooled-connection environments. The software takes the end-user ID and context information transparently from application servers and injects that information into the database connection, making Hedgehog IDentifier the only product of its type that is entirely accurate.
The most commonly used n-tier architectures sever the link between database actions and end-users due to the use of pooled connections between the application and the database. For example, once users sign in to applications such as financials or CRM, application servers present users to the database in aggregate, effectively sharing database connections for individuals’ actions. This approach precludes audits from tracing changes in the database back to specific users and makes it difficult to enforce security policies that assign privileges to people, not applications.
A recent Gartner report states: “Application monitoring is complicated by the use of connection pooling in multitier architectures. Connection pooling implements a common connection between the application server and the DBMS, which is used by the application server for all requests to the DBMS. From the DBMS perspective, all database access appears to be from a single ‘service account.’ Fraud detection requires analysis with user context. (1)
Hedgehog IDentifier can be installed on any of the commonly used Java application servers, including IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, Oracle iAS, JBoss and Apache Tomcat. Once installed, it passes user ID information through the database connection rather than rely on error-prone correlation and heuristic methods. Furthermore, the Hedgehog Enterprise rules engine can then allow or restrict access or issue alerts based on the real identity of the user making the request.
Slavik Markovich, chief technology officer at Sentrigo, said: “The ability to tie identity to behavior is critical in providing full traceability and accountability of individual users. In developing Hedgehog IDentifier, we solve a security and compliance problem raised by most customers using multi-tier applications. While it is possible to modify every application to include user ID API calls to the database, such an approach requires source code, development effort and ongoing maintenance—Hedgehog IDentifier provides an elegant solution with no overhead.”
Hedgehog Enterprise is a host-based software product that uses sensors that reside on the database host to monitor all activity. It is highly configurable, allowing administrators to fine-tune their security policy. Hedgehog Enterprise’s flexibility has allowed Sentrigo to create products such as Hedgehog IDentifier that take advantage of the highly granular visibility into database operations.
Hedgehog Enterprise, which now includes Hedgehog IDentifier, may be downloaded for a free trial from www.sentrigo.com.
(1) "DAM Technology Provides Monitoring and Analysis With Less Overhead,” 20 November 2007, by Mark Nicolett and Jeffrey Wheatman.
|
|
|
.gif){kind=small}
