Computer Associates is releasing a range of security tools to help IT managers track their employees' network usage.
The company is combining identity and access management tools with its existing eTrust products. This "security management architecture", as CA calls it, enables employees to keep a single identity when logging into different applications.
"CA is committed to providing security solutions that simplify security management across all platforms -- mainframe and distributed," said Toby Weiss, senior vice-president of eTrust security management at CA, in a press statement. "[T]he fragmented panoply of application and platform-specific security mechanisms across the enterprise can be coordinated, easily securing complete business transactions as they move across process boundaries."
CA has not released full details of how it will integrate these tools into eTrust products, but said it would provide a "common security backbone" across all network technologies. The company claims eTrust will use open standards such as SAML, Kerberos and SAF to enable interoperability between different platforms, applications and security mechanisms.
Currently only two CA products have the identity-tracking capability -- eTrust CA-ACF2 r8 and eTrust CA-Top Secret Security r8, but the company said it would be integrated into all eTrust products in the future.
Compliance regulations, such as Sarbanes Oxley, mean that some companies have to be able to produce audit trails for all their employees or be liable for fines and imprisonment. CA said this was a reason for its move.