CA Technologies extends Content-Aware Identity and Access management, delivers security solution for Microsoft SharePoint

CA Southern Africa has announced that CA Technologies will further expand its Content-Aware Identity and Access management (IAM) vision. It is now delivering a security solution for Microsoft SharePoint to help improve information security, reduce risk and meet compliance mandates.

Traditional IAM stops at the point of access. CA Technologies' Content-Aware IAM vision, a next-generation approach, takes IAM a step further to help control the access granted to users and how they handle information. This innovative approach helps organisations protect critical information from inappropriate use or disclosure.

“Balancing business productivity and enablement with security and data protection is one of the top priorities for the chief security officer. This is made more difficult by today's collaborative environments that include extended teams from within and outside an organisation,” says Ugan Naidoo, head of the security business unit at CA Southern Africa.

“For example, there are more than 65 000 Microsoft SharePoint customers: that's a lot of users accessing a lot of data. The challenge is to make sure the right users access the right data and handle it in the right way, which requires a layered security approach that includes Content-Aware Identity and Access Management from CA Technologies.”

To help address these challenges, CA is adding capabilities and integrating new releases of CA SiteMinder and CA DataMinder (formerly CA DLP) to deliver a content-aware security solution and help organisations protect the information stored, accessed and used in the Microsoft SharePoint environment. The CA SiteMinder and CA DataMinder updates, and resulting solution for SharePoint, were available from March 2012.

“Organisations are challenged with unknown Personally Identifiable Information (PII) that exists within documents residing across the enterprise,” says Jeremy Britton, director, security and privacy services, Deloitte. “The ability to identify and classify potential data risks in content, and control access based on the levels of risk, allows organisations to more effectively manage regulatory compliance and protection of sensitive data.”

As organisations expand their use of Microsoft SharePoint, they may face accelerated growth of siloed SharePoint instances, the proliferation of sensitive data across the SharePoint environment and increased compliance mandates.

CA DataMinder includes CA DataMinder Classification, which dynamically scans, locates and classifies sensitive content stored within Microsoft SharePoint. This content includes intellectual property, financial information and PII such as social security numbers, credit card numbers and other employee-relevant data. CA SiteMinder 12.5 will be enhanced to use the content classification information from CA DataMinder as input for access policies to determine more precisely whether a user should be granted access to a document. This combination will provide more fine-grained and better-defined access control, helping to improve the security of data without hampering productivity.

“CA's security solution for Microsoft SharePoint will provide convenient authentication through CA SiteMinder's single sign-on, authentication, authorisation and auditing, as well as content-aware access management that includes automatic data discovery and classification,” Naidoo points out.

“It also controls all phases of the information life cycle for SharePoint data.”

“We have supported many implementations for IAM systems, all improving security postures for those customers. A next-generation IAM approach that classifies and flags documents with sensitive content, and then associates identity and access policies with that content, will further enhance information protection,” says Jason Wilcox, manager, Security Practice at YASH Technologies, a leading technologies and services outsourcing partner.

“We are excited about the advancements that CA Technologies is making in the market and look forward to working with our clients to advance the way they implement identity and access management.”

CA Technologies first delivered capability for Content-Aware IAM by associating content and data policies with identities and roles managed by CA IdentityMinder (formerly CA Identity Manager). This helps to control and protect information better as users and groups change within organisations.

By enabling CA SiteMinder to use content classification information, data security is strengthened by adding the access element.

In addition, as organisations begin to shift from IT rationalisation and optimisation to deliver business service innovation and growth, CA Technologies' Content-Aware IAM technologies help enable and secure organisations to achieve business outcomes such as speed, cost and risk efficiencies, and improved performance. The key is to strike the balance between security and business enablement.

The CA SiteMinder 12.5 release includes a number of additional core improvements, including simplified management, support for Web 2.0/ Identity 2.0 technologies and enhanced federation management. Visit the CA Security Management blog for further details on the new releases of CA SiteMinder and CA DataMinder.