Stories by Tom Henderson and Rand Dvorak

e-DMZ's Password Auto Repository (PAR) is delivered as a hardware appliance with all the services necessary for it to act as a privileged account password manager. All privileged account passwords are issued based on administratively designed rules. The passwords may be deemed valid for an indefinite life, for finite periods of time or for single purpose activities such as installations, upgrades or configuration changes.

Quest Privilege Manager for Unix (QPM) currently only works with Unix derivatives. No Windows allowed.

Symark, late in 2006, broke code development ranks with OEM partner eDMZ Security. The PowerKeeper 2.0 running on HP hardware we tested represents some slight changes in terms of flexibility, operating system and application support between the two offerings. The company plans to release PowerKeeper 3.0 this summer, but that revised code was not ready for us to test.

Cyber-Ark's product was sent to us in pre-configured VMware-format virtual machines. While it's Cyber-Ark's policy to install 100 per cent of its products, we requested this optional product delivery mode that allowed us to install the product ourselves.

Privileged IT staffers literally holds the keys to the castle. Access to those keys that open the doors to critical operating system and application resources must be carefully managed and legally audited. Enter the class of products referred to as privilege account management wares.

In our latest set of test of virtual machine management tools, we examined VM host-centric management, planning and accounting applications from PlateSpin and Virtugo Software, a VMware plug-in for Microsoft's Operations Manager application from nWorks, and a storage-area network management tool from Onaro (which Network Appliance has just acquired) that offers specialized insights into the virtualized world.

Reflex Technologies' Command Center is itself a virtual machine that sits on VMware's ESX server and acts as an intrusion-prevention system, watching connectivity activity between other VMs and the virtual network interface provided by VMware.

The nWorks Management Pack for VMware for Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager 2007 is a long name for a tool that provides strong VMware monitoring and management capabilities that are ultimately driven by Microsoft's management platform.

PowerRecon is a planning and monitoring application for organizations with a high number of servers and virtual host targets. On the surface, PowerRecon looks similar to traditional network monitoring/management applications that track application inventory, connectivity and network usage.

In 2004 we tested several wireless LAN protocol analyzers and found two distinct characteristics: Those dedicated and built from the ground up for WLANs, and those that were modest add-ons to what were then labeled classic protocol analyzer products.