PowerTech Adds Innovatum’s Monitoring Tool to Product Mix

March 1, 2011 Alex Woodie

PowerTech has inked a deal with Innovatum to resell DataThread, a powerful database monitoring tool designed to provide real-time alerts into DB2/400 events for security and regulatory compliance purposes. PowerTech says the security tool complements its existing offerings, and will benefit from the market reach provided by PowerTech’s owner, Help/Systems.

DataThread is a powerful real-time change-monitoring solution designed to work with the IBM i security audit journal and the DB2/400 database. The software complements native IBM i capabilities by providing filtering and workflow mechanisms that sift through the millions of innocuous journal and database entries, and brings the most potentially dangerous entries–such as changes to sensitive objects, use of powerful commands, and access of confidential files–to the immediate attention of administrators.

PowerTech, which was acquired by Help/Systems and its equity partner two-and-a-half years ago, has been working with Innovatum for several months, says PowerTech director of security technologies Robin Tatum.

“We felt that they had a fantastic tool for monitoring database activity, and see this as one of the next growth areas with so much focus from PCI and other regulatory standards that require it,” Tatum writes in an e-mail. The two companies have worked together to modify DataThread to meet the specific needs of PowerTech customers, he adds.

“We’ve spent a lot of time on the PowerTech solution roadmap, and we’re looking to aggressively maintain our position as ‘the’ security vendor on i,” Tatum continues. “DataThread enabled us to go to market faster with a game-changing tool that we felt was already market-proven, while bringing the advantage of Help/Systems’ market reach.”

Tatum blogged about DataThread last week on the PowerTech PowerBlog, where he commended DataThread’s speed and thoroughness (and grumbled a bit about Minnesota’s snowy winter).

Sugar Hill, Georgia-based Innovatum also has partnerships with several other IBM i security software vendors, including Skyview Partners, which uses DataThread to monitor for journal and database changes with its IBM i security policy compliance tool; and Valid Technologies, which worked with Innovatum to integrate DataThread with its IBM i-based biometric authentication solution, called VSSA.

In the coming months, PowerTech is expected to roll out Compliance Monitor 3.0, and will be working on a major new release of Authority Broker this year as well. Its parent company, Help/Systems, also owns Bytware, which develops exit point monitoring software and a native IBM i anti-virus utility.