Novell Invests in Identity Management
Novell wants to expand its SUSE Enterprise Linux into security management by acquiring the technology assets of two software companies.
Based on two products from the Newton MA software firm Fortefi, Novell is planning a new Privileged User Manager for the second half of 2009. The combined product should provide hierarchical security levels for UNIX and Linux systems. Novell sees this as a pathway for their UNIX-to-Linux migration, because it provides a single tool for managing superuser access when migrating to SUSE Linux Enterprise.
Novell also wants to integrate the SecureLogin single sign-on solution into its identity management palette. The company acquired a perpetual source code license to SecureLogin from California-based ActiveIdentity, with which it previously had an OEM agreement. Single sign-on (SSO) provides user access to multiple applications with a single password, which is supposed to reduce IT cost, complexity and risk.