HERNDON, VA - Xceedium® Inc., the premier provider of privileged identity management for enterprise environments, announced in a press release that it has been issued its third patent covering core privileged identity management technologies.
US Patent 8,819,763 protects a system for granting administrative users selective access to managed systems based on fine-grained, dynamic access policies. Policies can be drawn from multiple resources such as corporate directories, including Active Directory and LDAP; change management data bases (CMDBs); provisioning systems and trouble-ticketing systems. The patented system automatically determines the appropriate grant of administrative access in response to user access requests, as well as in response to external triggers such as the creation of a trouble ticket. The patent also describes methods of mediating conflicts between policy sources.
Xceedium’s proprietary technology is instrumental in enabling organizations to manage and control the risks posed by privileged users and administrative credentials. Privileged users and their credentials are at the core of a continuing series of security breaches across government, retailing, financial services and other sectors. According to the Ponemon Institute, in a recent 12-month period 110 million Americans were impacted and 432 million accounts were compromised in data breaches. As a consequence, privileged identity management has become a high priority for security professionals who need to mitigate risk, satisfy more stringent compliance and audit demands surrounding trusted insiders and third parties, and secure expanding virtual and public/private cloud deployments.
“The ’763 patent protects techniques that allow for fine-grained access controls aggregated from multiple sources of policy. This is the core of privileged session management,” said John Suit, Chief Technology Officer at Xceedium. “Our growing patent portfolio demonstrates that Xceedium, a recognized trailblazer, is continuing to expand the technological limits of privileged identity management across traditional data centers, virtual infrastructure, and public/private clouds.”
Technologies covered by the patent support capabilities delivered in Xceedium’s Xsuite® privileged identity management product. Xsuite controls access, monitors, and records all activities of privileged users, both internal and external. Xsuite positively verifies users via multiple authentication mechanisms, including PIV/CAC and other smart cards, enterprise directories such as Active Directory and LDAP, Radius, and other methods. Xsuite establishes and enforces security policies protecting sensitive systems across traditional data centers, virtualized infrastructure, and public and private clouds. Xsuite provides full attribution of user activities, regardless of what resources they access. Xsuite vaults and manages credentials, federates identities, and protects systems regardless of where they are located; helping to reduce risk, ensure compliance, and lower administrative overhead.