Info Security Products Guide, the industry's leading information security research and advisory guide, has named Viewfinity a finalist in the three top categories applied for in the  2012 Global Excellence Awards Products and Services Excellence nominations. The categories for which we applied are directly related to the value we provide to our customers. The fact that our product is a finalist in categories that are based upon actual use case scenarios distinguishes our success and validates our relentless drive to provide tangible value.  More information related to why our customers were chosen can be viewed in our online case studies, which explains how we have align our product to meet their needs.

The finalist categories for Advanced, Ground-breaking products are:

·         Security Products and Solutions for Education

·         Best Deployment and Case Studies in the USA

·         Policy Management

Viewfinity and McAfee combine privilege management and whitelisting to provide cross over protection for your endpoints.

The integrated solution from McAfee and Viewfinity can help to reduce vulnerabilities to hackers, malware, and embarrassing security breaches that can prove costly to a company’s bottom line.

McAfee Application Control, managed by the McAfee ePO platform, gives enterprises an effective way to block unauthorized applications on servers and endpoints. Unlike simple whitelisting, McAfee Application Control uses a dynamic trust model, which eliminates the need for tedious manual updates to approved lists. 

Viewfinity’s support for least privilege environments extends the current McAfee Application Control portfolio to help enterprises implement multiple layers of security protection. Viewfinity Privilege Management provides granular control of user privilege escalation rights for applications and desktop functions (Active X, printer installations) via policy management.

Come see what the buzz is about and visit me in booth #306 or click here to sign up for a demo at Focus 2011.

Results of the third annual Bit9 endpoint security survey revealed that “while the majority of IT and security professionals said they are most concerned about advanced persistent threat attacks - like the one on RSA Security, a large number have not taken all the steps necessary to protect themselves from these attacks. Endpoints – laptops, desktops, servers – are the big blind spot for companies right now.”

We couldn’t agree more with Bit9’s conclusion and recommendation to the folks responsible for funding and implementing IT security projects: “This survey shows that IT and security administrators need to take a serious look at how they are protecting their endpoints and do more than just have a written policy.”

Protecting endpoints and implementing the best security mechanisms possible has become a multi-layered approach. The more layers of IT security protection you implement, the more secure your endpoints become. This equates to less vulnerability to hackers, malware, and embarrassing security breaches that will prove costly to your company’s reputation and bottom line.

As with whitelisting, moving to a least privileges environment should be strongly considered. The added layer of protection offered by locking down desktops in a least privileges environment further protects companies from unwanted incidents.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 2:00 p.m. ET, we’re hosting a webinar where our guest speaker, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Dr. Chenxi Wang, explains why eliminating administrator privileges is a smart move for mitigating IT security risks. 

Register for the webinar.

Review the Bit9 survey results.

Viewfinity was recently profiled on the International Data Corporation (IDC) Private Vendor WatchList. The profile details in depth Viewfinity’s Watch Factor scores, which are based on factual research by the IDC. IDC notes that the Privileged Identity Management (PIM) market is poised for strong growth, driven mainly by compliance and the move to cloud environments. Viewfinity is in a position to capitalize on this market opportunity because we provide cloud-based privilege management with a reach that extends to end users regardless of location, including support for laptop/notebooks outside the corporate network. 

The IDC watch factor profile scores vendors on multiple factors, including:

·         Market potential, the PIM market is expected to reach $250M in 2011 and grow to $425M by 2015

·         Customers acquisition growth

·         Companies catering to the emerging cloud security market opportunity

·         Corporate strategy and strong leadership

·         Established partnerships with premier technology vendors

The research concluded by IDC placing Viewfinity in the spotlight as a company to watch. The full report is available on IDC’s website:

Viewfinity Private Vendor WatchList Profile: Cloud-Based Privileged Identity Management (IDC #228749, June 2011)

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=228749

One Viewfinity customers expressed the value of our cloud-based solution, and the ability to manage admin rights for users who aren’t part of AD:

“Viewfinity’s Software as a Service model meant we didn’t have to procure servers or fit the project into any server implementation plan.  My team didn’t need to involve resources from the other IT departments in the project.  We looked at other privilege management vendors, but their solution integrated in a way that was too tied into Active Directory.  We liked Viewfinity because the desktop team didn’t have to launch a major project to tie into Active Directory and instead could push agent to a machine and could immediately begin to elevate privileges on the application level.” says Brian Grinstead, Support and Systems Management Coordinator for Indian Prairie School District.

Viewfinity wraps-up its sponsorship of the Gartner Security & Risk Summit with a great deal of success.  The show was professional, well organized and packed with interesting sessions and trends on IT security topics from notable Gartner analysts and industry CIOs and CISOs. 

Viewfinity had over 350 booth visitors in 3 days!  The IT security professionals, who when asked about “dealing with administrator rights for end users”, were all on common ground about the pain administrator rights can cause. Some agreed it is painful to support a least privileges environment and others agreed it is a painful security risk when users have administrator rights.  Visitors went on to express their views related to the careful considerations that need to be made when dealing with the subject of removing administrator rights.  Is an all or nothing approach effective? 

We were able to shed some light on this question by showing how the Viewfinity Privilege Management solution can help companies move to a least privileges environment in a non-disruptive manner.  They were impressed with the ease of use of our solution and its ability to negate the all or nothing approach in a seamless manner. Nice work as Viewfinity secured multiple projects just within the first hour on the first day of the show! 

A noteworthy session on “Cloud Performance Security” was covered in-depth by Gartner Analyst, Neil MacDonald, who put into light, that “By 2013 more than 50% of in-line security devices deployed in live networks will be virtualized.” I would like to thank Neil MacDonald for taking time out of his busy schedule to stop by the booth and speak with me on trending IT topics. 

There were plenty of other professionally delivered, smart lectures from Gartner analysts, such as by Gregg Kreizman, who did a great job lecturing about SSO; Dan Blum, who lectured adeptly on Developing a Cloud Computing Strategy, and Peter Firstbrook who intelligently addressed “Securing Web Gateways.”