Tivoli integrates policy with MQSeries

Tivoli Systems has upgraded its security software to better control access to applications and data for users of its WebSphere and MQSeries packages.

At the RSA Security Conference this week, Tivoli added support for IBM Corp.'s MQSeries messaging software and WebSphere middleware to its SecureWay Policy Director package Version 3.7. Policy Director software. It will let customers centrally manage the authentication of end users and ensure only the appropriate network resources are accessible to them. The idea behind the new release is to let customers define a policy once and have it deployed automatically across MQSeries and WebSphere applications. The support saves customers from recoding those applications individually. SecureWay also lets users manage security from a single, central console.

Roberta Witty, research director of Information Security Strategies at Gartner, says the native security provided with MQSeries messaging software is "quite onerous," and the automation available by using Policy Director with that application will prove less cumbersome for users to implement.

Witty says Tivoli's SecureWay Policy Director for MQSeries competes mostly with products such as MQSecure from Candle.

Policy Director can be installed on a variety of servers, including Unix, Windows 95, 98 and NT 4.0, RISC and Sun Sparc. With the package, users predefine access rights, and the software distributes them accordingly. Typically, developers have to write security code for each application, but with Policy Director the process is automated, the company says.

Policy Director 3.7 is available now and pricing is based on the number of users. Policy Director for MQSeries' pricing is based on server configuration. The company plans to develop an IBM WebSphere Application Server with an embedded version of Policy Director.