Raz-Lee Jazzes Up its iSecurity GUI

Published: May 19, 2009

by Alex Woodie

Raz-Lee Security unveiled a new release of its iSecurity GUI at the recent COMMON conference in Nevada. The security software vendor says the enhancements to its Windows-based console--including drill-down capabilities, role-based access trees, and new filters--will make it easier for administrators and auditors to manage and verify the security of their i OS environments.

Raz-Lee's iSecurity suite is a comprehensive collection of security tools for i5/OS and i OS environments. The suite is composed of more than 15 modules that accomplish tasks ranging from exit point control and analysis of i OS's audit journal to virus scanning and password enforcement.

In addition to these modules, Raz-Lee offers an Eclipse-based graphical user console, called the iSecurity GUI, which provides access to all of the functionality across all iSecurity modules. Users don't have to use the iSecurity GUI, and can opt instead to use the native 5250 green-screen interface. But because of the intuitive nature of graphical interfaces and the higher level of training required to navigate the 5250 interface, many iSecurity customers opt for the GUI.

Fig. A. The left-hand navigational tree structure of the iSecurity GUI is visible in this screenshot from a Raz-Lee PowerPoint presentation.

At COMMON, Raz-Lee unveiled a new release of its iSecurity GUI that delivers new functionality across a number of modules of the iSecurity suite that should make the jobs of security administrators and auditors easier.

For starters, iSecurity GUI has been enhanced for use with Visualizer, which is a type of data warehousing and business intelligence tool for answering specific questions about activities that have been logged in the Firewall or Audit components of iSecurity. With this release, Raz-Lee says it now offers the capability to drill down from Visualizer into the Audit and Firewall logs, which enables users to analyze specific events with more granularity.

Raz-Lee is also touting a new "preliminary access filter" that can greatly reduce the network load during data retrieval activities with iSecurity GUI and improve response times.

This release of the GUI also tailors the menu options available to users, depending on their user profiles. So, for example, an auditor with full rights will have access to more menu items on the left of the iSecurity GUI than a user with less authority.

Reporting has also been enhanced with this release. Standard reports are opened directly as GUI tables, and can take advantage of Eclipse's table management features, including the capability to export reports directly to spreadsheets. Similarly, reports that are stored in the IFS as PC format files (such as CSV, PDF, HTML) automatically open with the appropriate program for that format (see Fig. A.).

This release also brings support for Syslog in the iSecurity GUI menus that are specific to the Audit and Action modules. Syslog is the recognized log data standard, and supporting this format enables data collected by the Audit and Action modules to be exported to security information and event management (SIEM) systems.

"With this new release, we have vastly improved the iSecurity GUI and elevated it to a new level of professionalism," says Ilan Marnin, who heads up Raz-Lee's GUI development. "The user can now get very specific security-related information, and view or analyze this information with little or no effort," Marnin says in a press release.

The iSecurity GUI is provided free to customers that license other iSecurity modules. For more information visit www.razlee.com.

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