SPI, the African distributor for utility software products and services to the open systems segment of the IT industry, today announced that it had been appointed as the exclusive sub-Saharan distributor for the Privileged User Manager (PUM) product from Australia-based Applecross Technologies.
PUM provides users with a commercial-strength administrator account (super user) monitoring, management and auditing package for Unix and Linux-based systems.
PUM allows end-user organisations to centrally manage, monitor and audit the use of super user accounts, providing an indelible audit trail of all activity. The latest version of the Web browser-based PUM Client software now provides these super users with the ability to concurrently manage multiple systems through the same user interface.
"Systems administrators have sometimes baulked at restrictions imposed on them by security and compliance managers,” commented Chris Anderson, Managing Director of SPI. “The PUM Client software now provides those administrators with additional capabilities not provided by standard Unix and Linux operating systems. The new software will allow them to perform their jobs with greater efficiency, and to decrease error rates."
“A classic example of this is that without PUM installed, systems administrators of Unix and Linux-based systems typically have to bring up a separate window for each system they are managing,” continued Anderson. “In large sites, it is not unusual for a technician to be working with many windows open, with the resultant possibility that a command is entered for the wrong server. If an administrator requires a command to be entered into multiple systems, then it has to be entered separately into each window in turn. PUM provides a modern, intuitive Web browser user interface that allows a privileged user to invoke a command against a single managed server, to all managed servers, or to any chosen subset of managed servers in the same multi-tab interface. In each case the command will only be allowed if that user is allowed to invoke that command on that managed server at that time. All the traffic to all the managed servers is then centrally audited.
“Because the command is only issued once against a chosen subset of managed servers, the chance of erroneously issuing the command to the wrong server is reduced, and the time taken to manage multiple managed servers is significantly less than using traditional methods.
"Security and compliance managers often find it difficult to cost-justify additional spend, as proving a return on investment (ROI) is not always easy,” concluded Anderson. “PUM is a productivity enhancer and inexpensive, thus making that justification considerably easier."
Applecross Technologies (APTECH) is a privately held company, founded in 2005 and based in Perth, Western Australia. It develops and markets low cost, high quality security management software for Unix, Linux and Microsoft Windows systems.
For further information, please contact Chris Anderson at tel. +27 11 234 1560; fax +27 11 234 1387; e-mail chris@spi.co.za.
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