NetPro aims to secure Active Directory

NetPro this week announced Secure Active Directory Lifecycle Suite, a group of services designed to ensure the 24-7 availability and security of the directory and the applications that depend upon it. The glitziest feature of Secure ADLS is DirectoryLockdown, the only Active Directory security solution designed to mitigate certain attacks on Active Directory by rogue administrators.

ADLS also includes, for the first time, a non-NetPro-developed service – DNSAnalyzer, a DNS monitoring and alerting technology developed by Iceland’s Men & Mice (no, I don’t make this stuff up. Go visit its Web site – https://www.menandmice.com/).

ADLS’s DirectoryLockdown prevents the corruption of enterprisewide configuration information stored in Active Directory by constantly monitoring the Active Directory configuration naming context for unauthorized updates and preventing their replication to the rest of the enterprise.

ADLS also includes the previously released DirectorySim, DirectoryAnalyzer, DirectoryInsight and DirectoryToubleshooter modules as well as the newly introduced DNSAnalyzer module.

And just as DirectoryAnalyzer provides constant monitoring of Active Directory components with proactive alerting when potential problems are first discovered, so DNSAnalyzer works with your DNS. By detecting nearly 200 different DNS alert conditions, DNSAnalyzer significantly reduces the time and effort spent managing DNS and the risks associated DNS-related security violations.

If you’re running a Windows 2000-based network, if it has more than a few servers or you are seriously understaffed (e.g., you need to catch a couple of hours of sleep at least every other night) then you need products like Secure Active Directory Lifecycle Suite. And at least for now there is no other product like it, so you’ll need to go to NetPro and get it. But once you have it and see what it can do for you those few hours of sleep you do get will be far more restful.