Townsend Security today announced a significant update to its existing Alliance LogAgent for IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) solution, allowing full reporting of administrative users, which includes authority the user adopts through Group Profiles and Supplemental Group Profiles. Alliance LogAgent is a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) integration solution that collects, formats, and transmits security information in real-time to any SIEM or log collection server.

When the new configuration options are enabled, Alliance LogAgent will tag all significant security events as performed by the administrative level user. This enhancement will help security administrators easily identify which users have elevated privileges and enable SIEM solutions to quickly identify and alert on operations. In addition to the new administrative user reporting, Alliance LogAgent now provides an easy-to-use local assessment report that identifies privileged users. This will reduce the overhead of inspecting and adjusting privileges of IBM i users.

Alliance LogAgent is compatible with all SIEM solutions that accept Syslog messages, IBM QRadar Log Event Extended Format (LEEF), or the HP ArcSight Common Event Format (CEF). The new administrative field reporting will make it easy for SIEM administrators to create dashboards, compliance reports, and alerts based on reported fields. When an administrator privileges are detected Alliance LogAgent adds the following field to the security message:

admin_user=yes

For IBM QRadar the new field is:

adminUser=yes

By providing a normalized field in the security events sent to the SIEM monitoring platform, the SIEM’s query and forensic tools can be used more effectively.

“Many IBM i customers have struggled with identifying who on their system has elevated privileges. It is crucial to identify and strictly control these users as cyber criminals often use privilege escalation to enable the exfiltration of sensitive data,” said Patrick Townsend, CEO of Townsend Security. “On first look an IBM i account may appear to have normal user privileges, but may in fact inherit higher privileges through a Group Profile or Supplemental Group Profile. Alliance LogAgent now detects these elevated privileges in real time, and provides the security administrator with an easy-to-use report to identify the source of elevated privileges. We think this is a crucial enhancement that will help IBM i customers better secure their platforms.”

Alliance LogAgent is in use with a wide variety of SIEM solutions including LogRhythm, SecureWorks, NTT Solutionary, IBM QRadar, Alert Logic, AlienVault, McAfee SIEM, Splunk, SolarWinds, and many others. In addition to collecting the IBM i security audit journal information Alliance LogAgent collects system history messages, operator messages, exit point information, system statistics, and a variety of open source application logs in Unix/Linux format.

The solution is licensed on a per logical partition (LPAR) basis, with perpetual and subscription licensing options available. Existing Alliance LogAgent customers on a current maintenance contract can upgrade to the new version at no charge.