SolarWinds made their desire to be considered a serious player in the security space known during their most recent Tech Field Day presentation. Gartner predicted computer security spending to be over $118 B in 2018, so jumping into this market makes sense. Security isn’t typically associated with SolarWinds. There will be some effort to get the word out. Working in SolarWinds’ favor is the fact that the products look pretty good.

We were given a demo of SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM). The software allows for monitoring and managing Microsoft’s Active Directory. It attempts to solve many of the issues around account and permissions management. The reporting aspects of the tool made me think of similar products from Varonis and Tripwire. The Active Directory permissions management brought to mind Quest / One Identity’s Active Roles product. That’s not a bad thing, as all of those products are pretty good at what they do. Based on what we were shown, and the conversations with the guys at SolarWinds, ARM appears to be in that same league. Some of the ways ARM presents results could be viewed as on par or better.

The software is targeted at IT and security admins, however, I suspect it will be mostly used by IT types instead of security personnel. ARM provides a fairly extensive auditing, monitoring, and reporting capability across a customer’s on-prem and cloud environments. The cloud options at this point are primarily Microsoft Office 365 based, but that’s OK as ARM is going to be used in Microsoft shops. Those who use Azure Active Directory, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange will find this useful. Outside of Microsoft software, ARM supports SAP. There’s also a capability to create custom connections to hook into additional non-Microsoft offerings such as Box.

SolarWinds can leverage the ability to market to their very large existing customer base. Add to that a somewhat familiar look and feel with other SolarWinds apps and admins may lean this way. While there are others in this space, there are ways for SolarWinds to carve out a niche.

The full demo and explanation of ARM’s capabilities is in the video below. The product page where you can get basic pricing info, request a demo, and check out documentation is here https://www.solarwinds.com/access-rights-manager

Jim Hansen, VP of Products, Security and Cloud at SolarWinds discusses Access Rights Manager Recorded as part of Tech Field Day 18, Austin TX, February 8, 2019. For more information, visit https://techfieldday.com/appearance/solarwinds-presents-at-tech-field-day-18/

Disclaimer: Tech Field Day (TFD) pays for my travel, hotel, and meals during the events. Vendors might also provide small items similar to what is provided at conferences such as stickers, key chains, t-shirts, etc. TFD nor any of the presenting companies pay for my blogging.