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In a move that will change the work lives of sysadmins for the better, Heimdal Security A/S has acquired the BasicBytes IVS. All shares of BasicBytes are now owned by Heimdal™ Security, as part of Heimdal’s long-term strategy of changing the standard of endpoint security.
Heimdal has spotted great potential in BasicBytes’s fast-growing technology and aims to capture significant market share by offering innovative and mind-changing technologies. Heimdal™ plans to further develop the technology and will launch unique technology combinations with Endpoint security technology and Privilege Rights Management working in tandem, and is now working on Heimdal™ Privileged Access Management, a new product for system administrators, to be launched soon.
Heimdal® Privileged Access Management
- Automate the elevation of admin rights on request;
- Approve or reject escalations with one click;
- Provide a full audit trail into user behavior;
- Automatically de-escalate on infection;
Morten Kjaersgaard, CEO Heimdal Security details:
“While pursuing Heimdal Security’s expansion plans, AccessDirector (previously developed by BasicBytes) will be developed into Heimdal™ Privileged Access Management. As part of the acquisition of AccessDirector, we will expand its abilities within administrative rights management and combine it with our existing Proactive and Reactive protection technologies, to deliver a unique, highly advanced, and yet simple product offering, that to the furthest extent possible will run autonomously.
We want to offer a groundbreaking change in the way system admins handle security tasks and simplify security in organizations.
Our strategy of making advanced endpoint security made simple and our ambition to expand our portfolio is what made us to see that BasicBytes deserved a place in the Heimdal Security family. The technologies developed by BasicBytes so far will be enhanced to the Heimdal standards and aligned with our cybersecurity agenda.
Together with AccessDirector, the following products have also been added to the Heimdal Security resource vault following the acquisition of the BasicBytes company: RunAsHandler, Easy Click Assistant, and CM Tray Tools.
The first on our development roadmap is the Heimdal™ Privileged Access Management. This new product will first be integrated into the Heimdal Dashboard, available for the users of Endpoint Security Suite products. The expected release date for the new Heimdal™ Privileged Access Management integration is November 2019. Still, until the new product is launched, the existing BasicBytes product will still be available for sale.”
How will Heimdal™ Privileged Access Management work?
The new functionality will allow system admins to manage privilege permissions for users in their organization easily and securely. From the Heimdal™ Privileged Access Management tab or on mobile, system administrators will be able to view what permissions the users in their organization are asking for and grant (or deny) their privilege requests. Furthermore, this can even be run in “Auto-mode”, so that users’ actions are logged with a full audit trail, but can run without individual approval of actions – even combined with the protection suite offering so that high-risk users are blocked from escalation automatically. No more manual enabling and disabling, no more time waste – that’s the Heimdal™ Privileged Access Management promise.
The level of permissions that will be managed by Heimdal™ Privileged Access Management will also be granular, stratified, and complex enough to allow admins to maintain a secure level of control over what happens. As indicated, it will have a unique market offering, giving the option of denying requests coming from a specific endpoint in their organizational network if Heimdal™ Next-Gen Antivirus & MDM or the VectorN Detection engine (Heimdal™ Threat Prevention’s machine learning detection) has flagged that endpoint as displaying suspicious behavior during a past number of days.
Heimdal™ Privileged Access Management will give granular control to user rights such as:
- Allowing or Stopping “Run as administrator” or “Administrator Rights” privileges;
- Specify a written reason for each permission request (or not);
- Get permission to run their processes as admin or not;
- Get a limited time window for admin privileges on their endpoint;
Based on all the insights provided by the other tools within the Endpoint Security suite, admins will be able to:
- Remove permissions fast and quarantine the endpoint;
- Block elevation of system files;
- Enable email and/or Application alerts for each pending approval;
- Enable approval via Dashboard or via mobile
The history of each user and endpoint will be securely tracked and available to view in the dashboard so that admins can keep an eye on things and potential security incidents can be better documented.
We’re anxious to embark on this journey, starting from the base technology layer from our new acquisition, BasicBytes, and moving forward into plenty of other applications for a more granular vigilance and control over security.
“TheHeimdal™ Privileged Access Management functionality and dashboard is just a first step into this journey. After this launch more innovations are to follow on the Heimdal Security roadmap for the rest of 2019” – Morten Kjaersgaard, CEO of Heimdal Security.
You can read more about the new Heimdal™ Privileged Access Management product here.
You can find the Danish version of this announcement here.
About Heimdal Security: Heimdal Security is an emerging cybersecurity company, founded in 2014 in Copenhagen by winners of the world ethical hacking competition Defcon CTF. Since then, the company has grown spectacularly, earning awards for both its proactive security suite (Anti-Malware Solution of the Year in 2018) and for its blog, providing intelligence to security outlets worldwide (Most Educational Security Blog in 2016).
great info and cool product
Very usefull info
Thanks