Imperva and Raz-Lee Team Up for DB2/400 Security Software

February 9, 2010 Alex Woodie

Imperva, a developer of integrated security tools that monitors users and transactions from the application to the database level, next month is planning on supporting the System i server and its DB2/400 database with its SecureSphere suite of products. The company is tapping the System i security expertise of Raz-Lee Security for the development of SecureSphere Agent for DB2/400, the companies announced yesterday.

Founded in 2002 by former employees of firewall vendor Check Point Software Technologies , Imperva has focused on providing an end-to-end security solution that allows organizations to continuously track and audit user and non-user activity from the application firewall level all the way to back-end databases. Its “universal user tracking” technology works by discovering application IDs, monitoring user sessions, and correlating those sessions with specific database transactions, even if they span multiple systems.

With more than 4,500 customers, the Redwood Shores, California, company has found a fair bit of success with SecureSphere, which Imperva sells pre-loaded on hardened appliances. For years, the company has supported most major databases, including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2 UDB and Informix, MySQL, and Sybase. But there was one major database missing: DB2/400, known officially as DB2 for i by IBM. (The company also doesn’t appear to support the myriad System z mainframe databases and file systems, but with several tens of thousands of mainframe shops compared to hundreds of thousands of AS/400 shops, one could debate whether the mainframe is a “major” platform.)

Next month’s release of the SecureSphere Agent for DB2/400, which Imperva co-developed with Raz-Lee, will fill a hole in the database coverage, according to Limor Elbaz, vice president of corporate development for Imperva. “A large number of our customers and prospects expect Power i support,” Elbaz says in a press release.

According to Elbaz, Raz-Lee provided “the most robust and compelling platform support” for securing the System i platform. With Raz-Lee’s technology embedded in the SecureSphere Agent for DB2/400, Imperva customers will be able to monitor DB2/400 database activities for signs of unauthorized access. By monitoring the QAUDJRN, database journals, and ODBC requests, Raz-Lee’s technology will be able to oversee all inserts, updates, delete, and read actions performed on sensitive DB2/400 data.

Of course, System i shops could have gained these database monitoring capabilities by simply buying security software from Raz-Lee or another security software vendor. The real advantage of the integration with Imperva’s SecureSphere, therefore, is the capability to correlate and track changes in DB2/400 with activity occurring at the application level, in other database, or information gleaned through vulnerability assessment scans, which SecureSphere also provides.

The inclusion of DB2/400 support within SecureSphere gives System i shops some powerful new security capabilities, including protection against SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and brute-force log-in attacks. The company says “dynamic profiling” technology learns the structure, elements, and usage of sensitive Web applications, thereby enabling the software to quickly detect malicious activity.

The OEM agreement is a feather in the cap for Raz-Lee, which has been coming on strong in the System i security space lately, as well as Raz-Lee’s CEO, Shmuel Zailer. “The choice of iSecurity by Imperva highlights Raz-Lee’s prominent market position in the area of Power i application security,” Zailer states in a press release. “We were able to provide Imperva with a complete and comprehensive audit trail of Power i database activities and all related information.”