Novell Bolsters Identity and Access Management Portfolio with Acquisitions

Novell announced two moves today meant to bolster its identity and access management business.

The first is the acquisition of the technology assets of compliance and user management vendor Fortefi, which Novell plans to use as the basis for the upcoming release of Novell Privileged User Manager in the second quarter of 2009.  

The second identity and access management play is a perpetual source code license to ActivIdentity’s single sign-on tool SecureLogin, which has been available to Novell customers as Novell SecureLogin through an OEM agreement since 2001.

“We’re excited about adding Fortefi’s privileged user management solutions to our portfolio and bringing SecureLogin technology, development and support in-house,” said Jim Ebzery, senior vice president and general manager of Identity and Security at Novell, in a statement. “Customers can come to Novell as a one-stop-shop for all of their identity and security needs – whether they are seeking a point solution or a complete platform.”

Novell Privileged User Manager is based on two Fortefi products, Command Control and Compliance Auditor. It is designed to provide granular access control and auditing of “super” or “root” users across multiple systems.  According to officials at Novell, the product limits exposure to unauthorized activity and information access by helping customers rapidly enable or disable administrator-level users across both UNIX and Linux.  This acquisition also expands Novell's focus on UNIX to Linux migration by offering customers a single tool for managing superuser access while they migrate to SUSE Linux Enterprise, officials added. 

Acquiring a perpetual source code license to ActivIdentity's SecureLogin enables Novell to fully control the future development of Novell SecureLogin, and officials hope it will allow for better integration of SecureLogin into Novell’s portfolio of identity management tools.

Both the technologies from Fortefi and SecureLogin will be integrated into the Novell identity and security business unit.