IBM Expands Tivoli Risk Manager Support

IBMs Tivoli Risk Manager now automatically monitors and protects all the big databases from security threats, malicious users and other vulnerabilities, the company announced Tuesday.

Tivoli Risk Manager 4.1 now supports IBMs own DB2 Universal Database, Oracle Corp.s 8i and 9i, and Microsoft Corp.s SQL Server 2000.

The software is part of IBMs push to make systems autonomic, featuring self-protecting security event management that correlates database security events with events across an enterprises network. Such an enterprisewide view enables automated responses to proactively protect against threats and allows DBAs (database administrators) to distinguish between real threats and false alarms, said Tivoli officials in Austin, Texas.

The software offers autonomic computing features such as self-configuration and self-protection by assessing potential threats and automating responses such as server reconfiguration, patch deployments and account revocation, officials said.

IBM offered the example of a malicious user who attempts to delete a database entry. Such an action would trigger an alert to be sent to Tivoli Risk Manager, which would then automatically display user information taken from the database onto a security dashboard. If such an action were part of a larger, coordinated attack, Tivoli Risk Manager would correlate the attacks with other products across the enterprise, thus differentiating a large attack from a veritable sea of smaller incidents.

Tivoli Risk Manager is available immediately. Current customers can download the new support for DB2, Oracle databases and SQL Server from IBMs Web site at no charge.