Internal threats are the problem no one wants to think about. Organizations have spent a great deal of money to "keep out the bad guys" when in reality, most security breaches occur internally - caused by disgruntled employees, thrill seekers, or whoever. As I mentioned before, organizations need to understand that complete security is more than just intrusion detection.

We have another product that proactively addresses this situation. It's called Enterprise Directory Manager (EDM). EDM is an Active Directory management platform that, by design, eliminates internal security threats by simply not allowing your administrators to have privileged access to Active Directory, arguably one of a company's most critical databases. While all of our migration, administration and recovery products have security designed in, EDM is one of the best examples of this concept of "operational security."

What is, in your opinion, the biggest challenge in protecting sensitive information at the enterprise level?

Here is where the idea of operational security comes into play. To have a really secure network, you must consider the security aspects of everyday operational activities. For example, many people don't realize that a rogue user can gain broad administrative access with the Elevation of Privilege attack. Aelita discovered this vulnerability, and our tools can help you protect yourself.

There are also security issues raised during migration - permission settings can be lost when moving accounts, computers, mailboxes and public folders. Are your sensitive resources secure, both during and after migration?

And of course, there are issues such as how to enforce your Active Directory administration policies - how many users have administrative rights to make changes that can affect your entire forest?


There are many facets to security - the biggest challenge today is looking beyond intrusion detection to consider these broader types of questions.

What are your plans for the future

Our plan is to stay the course and maintain focus on three keys that have already contributed to our double- and triple-digit growth over the past five years. Those keys are:

Customer focus: Often, our customers speak directly with our development group. Because we remove the layers that can block communication, the real issues make their way directly to those responsible for making our products great.

Technology bias: Aelita currently dedicates more than 60 percent of its resources to R&D. This is a much higher level than most software companies.

Focus: We are the only company dedicated to the migration, administration, security and recovery of Windows-centric environments. We think that focus of our technology resources makes a big difference when companies compare us to the competition.