Bobel's Active Directory, Identity, Access & SaaS Blog » Bobel

AD CMDLETS 1.4 now live!

Bob Bobel — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:07:16 +0000

The 1.4 version of the ActiveRoles AD CMDLETS went live a few moments ago and you can download them here http://www.quest.com/powershell/activeroles-server.aspx.

AD CMDLETS Version 1.4 (Early look)

Bob Bobel — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:23:30 +0000

In late June or early July, a new version of the Active Directory PowerShell CMDLETS will be released. I wanted to give everyone a teaser about the new features to be added.

Here you go!

-        Certificate management
-        Support for cross-domain group membership
-        inactive accounts enumeration
-        single command to search in multiple containers
-        progress indication
-        proxy addresses management

Stay tuned and I will blog with more details around each feature over the next several weeks.

Funny Google search

Bob Bobel — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:26:21 +0000

This is clever… wish I had thought of it. Go to Google and enter Find Chuck Norris then click I feel lucky.

Quick Connect 4.5 Goes Gold!

Bob Bobel — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:16:46 +0000

Following up on our highly successful 4.0 release, 4.5 went gold last week. We are now going through the internal processes needed to release the product to the public next month.

The biggest news about this release is that Quick Connect can synchronize passwords between Active Directory and connected systems. Active Directory and connected systems are governed by different access policies. Consequently, users need to maintain different user accounts and different passwords on these systems. Maintaining several passwords on several different systems is a hassle for users and administrators. Quick Connect now provides a Password Capture Agent to be installed on all domain controllers in the source Active Directory connections. The Capture Agent tracks changes that were made to user password in Active Directory, and then Quick Connect Sync Engine synchronizes the passwords basing on this information.

Also new in this release:

Updated design of history log to allow better searching and filtering
Additional rules for synchronizing multi-value attributes
Various improvments and resovled issues

We had a excellent year in 2009 and with this hot new release of Quick Connect I anticipate an even better 2010.

How you can personally help Haiti

Bob Bobel — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:03:02 +0000

You can donate $10 to the Red Cross by texting Haiti to 90999.

This is really-really cool and it appears that $5M has already been raised; a billion will probably be needed. Once you send the txt message, you will get a message back asking you to confirm your donation to which you must reply YES before the $10 is added to your phone bill. http://www.redcross.org/

If someone else pays your phone bill (like if you have a company phone) you may want to donate a different way. For example, The company I work for, Quest Software partnered with Iridium to donate a bunch of Satellite phones and airtime to Haitian officials to coordinate relief efforts. And another example is a video from Jimmy Buffett created to raise awarness about the Red Cross’s text message donation program. The way I look at it, this could be my family needing help.

Kuppinger Cole’s Report on ActiveRoles

Bob Bobel — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:58:32 +0000

Kuppinger Cole produced a report covering the provisioning product I’ve been managing since 2004. The report paints a great picture of where Kuppinger Cole sees the product’s position in comparison to the rest of the market. Personally, it is very rewarding to see how well respected our product has become. (Read the report here)

Northeast User Group Meeting in progress

Bob Bobel — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:27:10 +0000

I took this photo during our lunch break. As you can see by trhe photo most people are thrilled to have me stop talking and given some great food.

Planet Earth is Broke, let the astorides fall…

Bob Bobel — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 12:00:48 +0000

Apparently NASA ran out of money, so we are no longer watching for Earth destroying asteroids. This is one way to solve the US’s Heath Care problems.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/08/nasa-asteroid-tracking-program-stalled-due-to-lack-of-funds.ars

ActiveRoles Server – Q2 Strong Results

Bob Bobel — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:00:51 +0000

This is cool… Doug Garn the Quest Software President & CEO talks about the strenth of ActiveRoles Server during the Quest Q2 earnings call…

“From an Active Directory management perspective, our Active Directory tools business was very strong in Q2. ActiveRoles Server continues to deliver on the promise of providing a secure way to manage AD and provision users across the enterprise. AD management continues to be the core of our growing identity in access management products family, which we term the QuestOne strategy.” For the full transcript of the call visit http://seekingalpha.com/article/155229-quest-software-inc-q2-2009-earnings-call-transcript.

Having been responsible for the ActiveRoles family of products for the past 5 years – it is rewarding to see that despite the economic climate – we continue to lead the industry. This is a testament to to the hard work and commitment of entire ActiveRoles team to deliver solutions that address the most difficult problems IT faces today. The most exciting part (for me personally) is that we already have an industry leading product, but we are now planning and developing our next generation of solutions that will absolutly blow your socks off.

Mevlin from Key West Vacation

Bob Bobel — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:51:42 +0000

I was on vacation in Key West with my Family and my family was shopping I ducked into the famous Hemmigway Bar now called Captain Tony’s. This dude Melvin (or maybe Marvin) jumps up from his bar stool at starts singing with the house guitar player. He was awesome! This was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in 2009.

Anyone for Berlin in Sept?

Bob Bobel — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:00:19 +0000

Quest’s The Expert’s Conference is on in Berlin Sept 14th to the 16th and I’ve been give the good fortune to attend. It will be great to see many of the folks that I’ve not seen for a year or so.

If you haven’t signed up for TEC Europe yet, be sure to do so as soon as you can – you can sign up at http://www.tec2009.com/

Bob

Skype to be discontinued?

Bob Bobel — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:26:25 +0000

We all hope not, but it could potentially be discontinued if Joltid Ltd wins its legal battle against Ebay the owner of Skype. Both sides of the dispute are claiming the other has violated the contractual agreement between them. It is my understanding that Niklas Zennstrom sold Skype to Ebay later to form Joltid; Joltid retains the P2P technology during the sale – pretty interesting.

This reminds me a lot of the situation RIM faced, but one difference is obvious. In that case an individual “claimed” to own RIM’s technology – here it is pretty clear Joltid DOES own the technology.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/biztech/07/31/skype.lawsuit.threat/index.html

Want to Master VMWare Infrastructure?

Bob Bobel — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:44:57 +0000

I was at my local book store yesterday and as I was meandered through the computer section a name on one of the books caught my eye; it was my old friend Chris McCain. The book is titled Mastering VMWare Infrastructure and after spending fifteen minutes or so seems to be very comprehensive. (I actually when home without the book, but bought it later from Amazon in Kindel format.) I pinged Chris on IM and found out that in addition to the book on virtualization, he had also been working pretty extensively implementing various solutions including the those from Quest the company for which I work. The book has lot of great details and is written in an easy to read style. I certainly recommend it to anyone wanting a deep dive. http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-VMware-Infrastructure-Chris-McCain/dp/0470183136

Will my audit fail without Attestation? (Part 3 of 3)

Bob Bobel — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:14:02 +0000

Most legal or regulatory requirements simply state that both Access Controls and Attestation are required for an audit, but they don’t specify if those controls are to be paper based or part of an electronic workflow. Many organizations spend thousands of hours building a paper based set of controls and attestation process only to be asked to “prove” the controls work. Because the controls are only paper based verifying the effectiveness of the controls becomes time consuming and difficult as paper requests and reviews are shuffled between people or departments. More and more auditors are discovering that a lack of controls, especially around unintended group usage, is cause to delay or fail an audit.

A caution about Attestation over group memberships: When a group is created and assigned access to a specific resource, this assignment is deliberate and intended. Unfortunately, over time it is possible for the group to receive unintended access to some resources, either maliciously or accidentally, because the operating systems and directories do not have the ability to prevent it. Therefore, the resource owner is never really able to know all of the accessible resources of the group. This directly impacts the third attestation statement so make sure any electronic attestation solution you select has the ability not only to certify who has access, but that it also provide the capability to show to what those users have access.

What makes Attestation Difficult? (2 of 3)

Bob Bobel — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:02:10 +0000

First there is no built-in mechanism to enforce an attestation policy or help perform the access reviews. Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft Active Directory use groups as the basic mechanism to control access to resources, and most non-Microsoft operating systems and directories use them as well. Because groups are universally accepted as the method by which users are authorized to use a resource, many vendors provide the ability for group attestation as part of access management solutions. This functionality is intended to satisfy audit or security requirements.

Unintended Access Senarion (Click to enlarge)

Read Part 3 of 3 here http://www.bobbobel.com/will-my-audit-fail-without-attestation-part-3-of-3/