A member of the vendor's Encryption and Key Management Suite of products (which also includes RSA Key Manager and BSAFE), RSA File Security Manager provides the ability to centrally manage both the encryption of and access to selected files or folders on Windows (2000/XP/2003) or Linux (Red Hat Enterprise 3/4) file servers. RSA File Security Manager can be deployed as a stand alone product, or as an integrated tool with the vendor's RSA SecurID or RSA Key Manager offerings.

RSA File Security Manager consists of two primary components: Individual Adapter modules, which run directly on the file servers to be managed and facilitate the actual encryption and access control of the files and folders to be protected; and the central Adapter Manager GUI, which runs on a Windows (2000/XP/2003) machine and provides the centralized management interface of the platform. The Adapters run on top of the supported operating systems, with file access requests from clients running through them for the enforcement of access controls. The vendor states that the access and encryption process is transparent to end users; who only see a difference if/when they are blocked from accessing a protected resource.

The product supports integration with Active Directory and/or LDAP repositories, including support for the definition and enforcement of role-based access policies. Protected files are encrypted in-place at the data payload level only (not meta-data), enabling file server administrators to continue working with files as necessary while not being able to access the actual content of the files themselves (unless so authorized). File encryption can be applied selectively to individual files or to entire directories or drives as needed. Both file access attempts and administrative actions are logged for compliance reporting.

The latest release of RSA File Security Manager includes the aforementioned integration with the vendor's RSA Key Manager and SecurID; support for 64-bit Windows and 32-bit Red Hat platforms; FIPS 140-2 validation; and an audit-only mode that allows the product to monitor-only the access to select data without enforcing access or encryption controls.

RSA File Security Manager is available now. The Adapter Manager costs approximately $35,000 and each Adapter runs for approximately $10,000.

Contact RSA Security (a division of EMC) for further information.