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AGOURA HILLS, Calif. - May 15, 2006 - Symark, the leading provider of Unix and Linux security and administration solutions, today announced the release of PowerKeeper 1.5, the industrys most advanced, best-of-breed product for the secure storage and retrieval of administrative account passwords in heterogeneous IT environments. PowerKeeper 1.5 includes a comprehensive set of logging and audit-trail capabilities to support security and regulatory compliance efforts, an expanded collection of command line interface (CLI) commands to streamline the administrative password management process.

Regulatory compliance requirements for data privacy in heterogeneous IT environments are the main business drivers behind the dramatic increase in sales of Symarks PowerKeeper security appliance, said Doug Yarrow, president and co-CEO of Symark. PowerKeeper 1.5 represents a new generation of products that clearly add value as the complexity of corporate IT security increases under the watchful eye of government regulators.

PowerKeeper automates the process of managing and protecting the sensitive Unix/Linux superuser or root password and other privileged administrator passwords that serve as the keys to the kingdom. The alternative manual process is a time consuming, labor-intensive task that often is prone to human error and the creation of potential security vulnerabilities. In many enterprises today, systems administrators do not incorporate best practices into the creation, storage, and administration of sensitive, high-level passwords. Instead, these critical passwords are often saved on normal production servers, in Excel spreadsheets, shared, or simply written down on paper. This type of carelessness invites the possibility of a rogue employee or hacker to acquire the means to access and possibly steal proprietary information. PowerKeeper solves this problem by storing and managing sensitive passwords via a secure, hardened appliance that is inaccessible to outsiders and all but the most privileged employees. In addition, the appliance tracks and logs all administrative password requests, releases, and activity for any PowerKeeper managed system and creates an audit trail from which various reports can be generated. For the most critical security situations, PowerKeeper generates one-time use passwords that are automatically disabled as soon as that request expires, after a specific period of time or after other specific trigger events.

Every enterprise has to deal with the risk and problem of managing sensitive IT user accounts and the privileges that they afford system administrators and database administrators, said Roberta J. Witty, a research vice president with Gartners Security and Privacy Group. Secure password store products reduce these risks by controlling and tracking users who have access to these sensitive accounts, under what circumstances, and for how long.

About PowerKeeper 1.5

This new version of PowerKeeper has added support for secure file storage and retrieval, which provides the ability to securely store encryption keys, and digital certificates. Reports are now available that demonstrate added security and compliance audit control of these items. For example, Auto Approved Release Report displays all instances of auto-approved password release requests and can be useful for preparing for a security or compliance audit. PowerKeeper captures this activity through its embedded workflow functionality, and the enhanced auditing and logging capabilities enable users to produce reports that detail all user and administrative actions that have occurred on PowerKeeper. The level of detail available in these reports allows Symark customers to use them as a pre-audit checklist to ensure that their organizations policies and procedures comply with applicable security and compliance regulations.

PowerKeeper 1.5 has an expanded collection of CLI commands to streamline the administrative password management process when the appliance needs to be accessed remotely. Administration of access to certain systems using the CLI is more efficient now via PowerKeepers more than 45 user CLI commands such as change user password, list permissions, revoke permission, view log, update alias, drop group member, and force reset. In addition, an audit trail of the executed CLI commands is created and they are logged accordingly.

PowerKeeper now supports SCP, a secure version of the Unix remote file copy (rcp) command for secure copying of backups to remote locations and the upload of backups and files. Support for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) has been added as an option for secondary authentication for all systems. The ability to turn PowerKeepers password auto-change mechanism on or off for the Information Security Administrator (ISA) password releases has been added in this new version as well. This affords IT organizations the choice of whether the password will be changed after it has been retrieved and used by an ISA user. Version 1.5 also adds the new role of User Administrator, a role that can perform administrative functions for other users. Administrators can now edit static routes, enabling PowerKeeper to communicate with more gateways and manage virtually any system.

PowerKeeper 1.5 is available now. Pricing starts at $25,000 for an appliance that manages up to 100 systems.

About Symark

Founded in 1985, Symark is the leading provider of security administration solutions for heterogeneous IT environments. Symark PowerBroker enables granular delegation of administrative privileges while restricting UNIX/Linux root account access. Symark PowerPassword, User Management Edition provides UNIX/Linux user account management along with login and password security policies. Symark PowerKeeper provides storage and secure access of administrative passwords for multiple servers, applications, and network devices. All three products offer central administration and detailed audit logs. Symark offers extensive expertise in enterprise computing security, and its products are backed by unmatched technical support. For more information, visit us at www.symark.com