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AutoProf Enhances Windows Patch Management By Extending Group Policy
"AutoProf this week rolled out Policy Maker Software Update, a Group Policy-based patch-management solution for Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The offering leverages another AutoProf product called Policy Maker Professional, which extends the Group Policy-based management and configuration features in the Windows 2000/2003 Server Active Directory."
# posted by Robbie (6/30/2004 07:03:48 PM)
NetPro Ships Industry's First Complete Configuration Change Auditing Solution for Active Directory
"Available now, ChangeAuditor tracks, audits, reports, and alerts on the changes that impact the directory, including everything from GPO and Schema to critical group and operational changes. ChangeAuditor delivers the "5 Ws" (who, what, when, where, and why) of Active Directory change, and also captures details on the previous and new change values. With ChangeAuditor, users avoid the change-related risks of degraded service, costly network downtime, business-crippling security breaches, and non-compliance with government regulations, such as FISMA, HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley."
Read more at source...
# posted by Robbie (6/30/2004 07:01:51 PM)
New Download: Active Directory to ADAM Synchronizer Beta
The Active Directory to ADAM Synchronizer Beta provides one way synchronization from Active Directory to ADAM.
Overview
"The feature will provide synchronization of data from AD to ADAM and keep the ADAM data consistent with the source AD data. Application administrators and developers can use a configuration file and a scriptable command line interface to specify a filtered and scoped subset of data to be pulled from AD to ADAM. There will be no data written back to AD and the objects and values in ADAM are not “transformed” in any way. Object or attribute based evaluation rules cannot be implemented and all values from the source AD are authoritative so while the target ADAM app may extend the data, any shared data will be overwritten with AD data values."
# posted by Robbie (6/29/2004 12:32:12 PM)
New Download: Account Lockout Best Practices White Paper
"This white paper describes how settings in the Account Lockout and Password Policy nodes of the Default Domain policy settings affect account lockout and makes some general recommendations for configuring and troubleshooting account lockout issues."
# posted by Robbie (6/29/2004 12:30:04 PM)
New Download: Active Directory Application Mode Reviewers Guide
"This guide walks you through the various operations developers and administrators would need to perform with ADAM and provides step by step instructions for the various tasks."
# posted by Robbie (6/29/2004 12:28:06 PM)
System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory
One question I receive frequently about Active Directory Cookbook is if I could write parallel code examples using .NET like I have Perl. I've thought about it, but it wouldn't be an easy task because System.DirectoryServices is a generic LDAP API and does not make it easy to program against AD. I just read Andy Harjanto's TechEd 2004 slides and it looks like they are working on a System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory API for .NET 2.x that will be specific to AD. Very cool stuff. That could be a possiblity for the next edition of the book.
If you are interested in reading more about System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory, check out Andy's slides. Go to http://microsoft.sitestream.com/TechEd2004/, select Search Sessions, enter Harjanto for the search term, and click Search.
# posted by Robbie (6/27/2004 01:19:52 PM)
Microsoft TechEd 2004 Slides Available
Over 400 presentations from TechEd 2004 are now publicly available. I've downloaded a bunch already and have started going through them. There are some interesting nuggets I'll be posting later.
# posted by Robbie (6/27/2004 01:10:17 PM)
New Download: Server Performance Advisor
"Service Performance Advisor is a server performance diagnostic tool developed to diagnose root causes of performance problems in a Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, particularly performance problems for Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 and the Active Directory® directory service. Server Performance Advisor measures the performance and use of resources by your computer to report on the parts that are stressed under workload.
Other server roles include system overview (hot files, hot TCP clients, top CPU consumed), print spooler, context switch data and preliminary File Server trace data."
# posted by Robbie (6/27/2004 01:06:52 PM)
Article: Major Real Estate Firm Adopts DigitalPersona Fingerprint Recognition Technology
I reported here back in March that the Pentagon is trying out DigitalPersona's fingerprint recognition solution as a replacement for passwords. Here is another story about a large real estate investment company doing the same thing.
"By implementing the latest in biometric fingerprint identification, we are expecting to reduce the costs and security risks associated with the burden of trying to manage passwords. Cadillac Fairview employees have a priority to focus on business, not on worrying about changing their passwords."
# posted by Robbie (6/24/2004 08:23:34 AM)
BindView Expands Directory Administration Solutions to Help Organizations Meet Regulatory Compliance and Auditing Standards
BindView announced some new features for their products today:
New enhancements in bv-Admin for Windows 7.20 include:
-- Audit and Regulatory Compliance: To help meet security auditing requirements for regulatory compliance, bv-Admin provides an industry-first centralized auditing capability for Microsoft Active Directory, enabling data consolidation across multiple domains from a single location.
-- Real-Time System and User Administration: IT administrators can automatically update Organization Unit and Site Locations, significantly reducing the time and complexity of managing Active Directory, and resulting in improved customer service levels.
New enhancements in Password Self Service 7.20 include:
-- Extensible Architecture: Allows plug-ins for any LDAP-based application
-- Expanded Platform Support: Now includes Sun iPlanet, in addition to Windows, SAP, UNIX and Linux. Users are able to reset passwords directly from their own workstation, without network authentication.
# posted by Robbie (6/22/2004 10:10:36 PM)
Article: Build a virtual Active Directory lab with VMware
VMWare is a god-send for anyone that needs to run multiple multi-domain Active Directory test environments. The problem is that a domain controller can only be authoritative for a single domain. That means if you need to set up 3 Active Directory forests with 4 domains each, then you need a whopping 12 servers to pull it off. That is, unless you use VMWare. With VMWare, you could reasonably run all 3 forests on only 3 servers. And even better yet, you can automate most of the creation of the VMWare virtual servers and build of the domain controllers.
Here is an article that gives an overview of using Active Directory on VMWare GSX Server.
# posted by Robbie (6/22/2004 11:09:01 AM)
Article: Berkeley DB Java Edition and LDAP
"We're actually in the process of building an embeddable, pure-Java LDAP server called Eve. She's a beaut, introducing triggers and stored procedures to the world of LDAP. We intend to have it compete head-to-head with the [Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Server 2003] ADAM [Active Directory Application Mode] server. " Continue at source...
I'm a big LDAP fan, but lets face it, there hasn't been a lot of innovation with it since Windows 2000 Active Directory was introduced. Triggers and stored procs functionality should already be there. Maybe the Sleepycat guys will push the LDAP envelope the way Microsoft did back in 1999.
# posted by Robbie (6/22/2004 10:59:26 AM)
New Group Policy Task Force (GPTF) Organization Formed to Coordinate Efforts Between Vendors Who Enhance Group Policy
Jeremy Moskowitz has helped organize a Group Policy Task Force (GPTF) Organization. Good idea. Hopefully this effort will lead to wider adoption and usage of Group Policy as a mechanism to manage clients (of all kinds).
Now we just need something like for Directory Services as a whole ;-)
# posted by Robbie (6/19/2004 09:28:18 AM)
Article: Identity management - Sun determined to take lead in growing $4bn market
"[Johannesburg, 17 June 2004] - In its bid to lead the lucrative identity management market with its current estimated value of $4 billion, Sun Microsystems has announced a comprehensive set of products and alliances that enable it to provide complete and cost-effective solutions to businesses seeking more secure operating environments."
Continue at source...
# posted by Robbie (6/19/2004 09:19:56 AM)
Article: Pace of identity adoption picks up
"Demand for identity management software has taken off faster than some researchers had expected. And Microsoft is one company that has rushed to market in the past year with products to meet that demand."
Read more...
# posted by Robbie (6/10/2004 02:12:54 PM)
Identity Management Resources - Getting Started
From Brian Redmond's Weblog...
# posted by Robbie (6/10/2004 02:05:23 PM)
Sun Consolidates ID Management Systems
With Sun and Microsoft's new friendship apparently blooming, it is interesting to see Sun finally providing some semblance of a roadmap with their IdM products. Here is another story.
BTW, in case you haven't heard yet, Sun has once again changed the name of their directory server (previously called SunONE Directory Server and iPlanet Directory Server before that and Netscape Directory Server before that). Now it is called Java System Directory Server or System Directory Server for short. Go figure.
# posted by Robbie (6/07/2004 10:36:09 PM)
Microsoft 'TrustBridge' Resurfaces
Here are more details on Microsoft's IdM roadmap. Here are a few interesting tidbits:
"In the Longhorn timeframe (2006+), Microsoft is planning to make manageability enhancements to the version of Active Directory that is integrated into its Longhorn product family. Microsoft also is planning to make Active Directory's password policy more granular in this release, according to the roadmap.
Microsoft also is committed to providing a product or technology called the "Identity System" in the Longhorn timeframe. This is a "simplified and secure digital identity consumer experience," according to the TechEd slides."
# posted by Robbie (6/07/2004 10:10:47 PM)
Microsoft Details Features of 'R2'
Microsoft outlines identity management roadmap
Some interesting developments coming out of TechEd:
"Formerly codenamed TrustBridge, the technology is now called Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS), Microsoft said. It will ship next year as part of the Windows Server 2003 Update, codenamed R2, and allow users to federate identities between corporate boundaries. Federation lets an identity credential issued by one company be used for access to a partner’s network."
Read more...
# posted by Robbie (6/07/2004 09:55:31 PM)
OpenNetwork Extends Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 Provisioning Capabilities With Connectors To SAP R/3 And Oracle Systems
OpenNetwork has created MIIS connectors for SAP R/3 and Oracle. Read more...
# posted by Robbie (6/07/2004 09:51:33 PM)
W2KNews Announces W2K Target Awards
"W2KNews Announces W2K Target Awards. Categories include Best Anti-spam, Best Anti-virus, Best Active Directory Management tool, Best Enterprise Security tool, Best Network Traffic Monitor and a number of other areas."
# posted by Robbie (6/07/2004 09:41:06 PM)
AutoProf Releases Group Policy-based Patch Management Solution
"AutoProf announces the general availability of Policy Maker Software Update, the company's innovative Group Policy-based patch management solution for Windows 2000, XP, and Server 2003 operating systems, that will leverage the power and capabilities of Group Policy and Microsoft's Automatic Updates service."
# posted by Robbie (6/07/2004 09:38:05 PM)
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