Tokyo, Jan 11, 2011 – (JCN Newswire) – NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) announced today the development of technology that collectively distributes and configures access policy to a variety of computing resources in a cloud computing environment. The newly developed technology helps to significantly reduce operation costs and to improve security.
Access policy is the information that determines the computing resources that are accessible to each user as part of protecting against unauthorized use. All software with access control functions, including virtual machines, operating software, data base and application software, require access policy to be set individually. This manual configuration becomes a heavy burden for system administrators within cloud environments, which feature a variety of software that run on a broad range of virtual machines.
NEC developed a management software model based on the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF(1)) Common Information Model (CIM(2)) that enables the distribution and centralized configuration of access policy.
The company also developed “Integrated Access Control Management Software” and “Policy Provisioning Agent Software” based on this newly established software model.
These new developments enable automatic configuration of access policy, which reduces the work load of system administrators, while at the same time lessening vulnerability.
Furthermore, the flexibly of these developments accommodate changes and additions to servers and software.
NEC is promoting this CIM based model as an international standard specification in 2011 through a proposal to DMTF. As a part of this activity, NEC and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI(3)) of Korea jointly demonstrated the model’s effectiveness through “Integrated Access Control Management Software” loaded on an NEC server that successfully distributed access policy to “Policy Provisioning Agent Software” on a Linux server at ETRI.
The “Policy Provisioning Agent Software” used in this demonstration is available to the public as open source software by ETRI ( http://opendrim.sourceforge.net).
The main features of these new developments are as follows:
1. CIM based management model
The model enables a common method to distribute and configure access policy that is independent from vendor specifications in an integrated server environment, where it is necessary for different virtual machine software, operating systems and middleware to co-exist.
NEC modeled access control behavior and control information as an extension of CIM. Adoption of policy distribution and configuration functions based on this model enable system administrators to distribute and configure access policy collectively, regardless of vendor and software.
2. Development of “Integrated Access Control Management Software” and “Policy Provisioning Agent Software” based on a new software model
“Integrated Access Control Management Software” enables centralized control and collective distribution of access policy, while “Policy Provisioning Agent Software” configures access policy for individual software on the receiving side.
This software is in compliance with international standards of message distribution protocol for system operation management. System administrators can automatically set policy configuration for existing virtual machines, operating systems and middleware by simply installing “Policy Provisioning Agent Software.”
Looking forward, NEC will continue to promote research and development in order to establish commonly usable IT security measures for the coming cloud computing era.
Part of this achievement was supported by the “Secure Platform Project” (2007-2009), sponsored by the Japan Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry.
(1) Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) is an international standardization organization that enables interoperable management of distributed multi-vendor systems. CIM has been standardized by DMTF.
(2) Common Information Model (CIM) is a common model to define management information for systems, networks, applications and services in a vendor independent manner.
(3) Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) is an information and communication technology research institute funded by Korean government. Both ETRI and NEC are DMTF members.
About NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation (TSE: 6701) is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. By providing a combination of products and solutions that cross utilize the company’s experience and global resources, NEC’s advanced technologies meet the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers. NEC brings more than 100 years of expertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses and society. For more information, visit NEC at http://www.nec.com.
Contact:
Kosuke Yamauchi NEC Corporation +81-3-3798-6511 E-Mail?Fk-yamauchi@ce.jp.nec.com
Jan 11, 2011
Source: NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation (TSE: 6701) (FTSE: NEC.IL) (U.S: NIPNY)
From the Japan Corporate News Network
http://www.japancorp.net
Topic: New Product
View more news from these Sectors: Networks Cloud Computing
Article source: http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=23597
Category: Vulnerabilities/Exploits