NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Feb. 26, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Paramount Defenses, a global cyber security company founded and led by a former Microsoft cyber security expert, today announced the availability of Gold Finger 6.0, the world's most capable Active Directory Audit Tool and the world's most valuable cyber security solution.

DESIGNED TO ADDRESS THE WORLD'S #1 CYBER SECURITY RISK

From the U.S. Government to the Fortune 1000, the IT infrastructures of over 85% of organizations worldwide are powered by Microsoft's Windows Server platform.

In these IT infrastructures, at the very foundation of cyber security lies Microsoft's mission-critical Active Directory technology, the focal point of identity and access management and administrative delegation.

In these IT infrastructures, the entirety of an organization's user accounts and their passwords used for authentication, security groups and their memberships used to authorize access to all IT resources, and computer accounts and their security policies used to store and protect IT resources, are all stored, protected and managed in Active Directory.

Active Directory is thus the very foundation of organizational cyber security worldwide, because not just the proverbial keys to the kingdom, but in fact the proverbial keys to every lock, room and building in the kingdom lie in the Active Directory.

Given its vital role, the Active Directory itself is worthy of the highest protection because if the Active Directory itself is compromised, the entire organization instantly becomes vulnerable to compromise.

The #1 cyber security risk to Active Directory deployments and consequently the world's #1 cyber security is the risk posed by Active Directory Privilege Escalation, which involves a malicious perpetrator escalating their privilege by exploiting unauthorized access grants provisioned in Active Directory to gain administrative access in Active Directory and within minutes, using this access to gain control over the entire IT infrastructure.

This risk stems from the fact that there exist a large number of unauthorized effective access grants in most Active Directory deployments, which can potentially be identified and exploited by any insider to gain administrative access in Active Directory, and subsequently instantly access, modify, divulge or destroy virtually any or all organizational IT assets.

A PARAMOUNT CYBER SECURITY SOLUTION

Gold Finger is the world's only cyber security solution that can accurately identify exactly who has what authorized and unauthorized effective access granted in an organization's Active Directory deployment.

Its innovative, patented access assessment technology completely automates the determination of effective access in Active Directory. Automation gives organizations a substantial edge over malicious perpetrators because it lets them identify and lockdown all unauthorized access grants in Active Directory swiftly, before such grants can be identified and exploited by malicious perpetrators.

For most organizations, the timely availability of such valuable effective access insight can mean the difference between security and compromise.

Today Gold Finger is deployed in five continents worldwide, and it is used by the world's most important government and business organizations including the United States Government, the British Government, the Canadian Government, Microsoft, IBM, Google, and several other organizations worldwide.

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS RELATED CYBER SECURITY BREACHES ON THE RISE

Cyber security breaches involving insiders identifying and exploiting unauthorized access grants to obtain elevated access rights and compromise organizational security are on a steady rise.

The recent theft and disclosure of vast amounts of highly classified information by Edward Snowden, a former U.S. government contractor may very well be the best example of just how much damage can be inflicted by just one such security breach.

It is believed that Snowden may have either already had or obtained and misused elevated access rights in Active Directory to obtain unauthorized access to vast amounts of highly classified information.

VERSION 6.0 DELIVERS THE SWIFTNESS THAT ORGANIZATION NEED

Version 6.0 substantially enhances the performance of Gold Finger's unique effective access audit algorithms, delivering up to a 5x gain in the speed with which Gold Finger can assess effective access, thus reducing the amount of time taken to analyze effective access by up to 90%.

The ability to obtain such paramount effective access insight swiftly gives organizations a formidable edge.

Version 6.0 also delivers select, high-value, capability enhancements that provide organizations the flexibility they need to efficiently and cost-effectively fulfill all their Active Directory related security, access and effective access audit needs.

The company also announced a new pricing model designed to make Gold Finger affordable for small, medium and large, private and public organizations worldwide.

For additional details on Gold Finger's unique effective access audit capabilities, its new pricing model, and to learn more about what's new in Gold Finger 6.0 please visit – http://www.paramountdefenses.com.

About Paramount Defenses

Paramount Defenses is privately held U.S. based Global Cyber Security Company engaged in the development of paramount cyber security defenses for organizations worldwide.

Today its customer-base spans five continents worldwide and its innovative cyber security solutions, powered by patented technology, uniquely fulfill a mission-critical global cyber security need.

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SOURCE Paramount Defenses