IBM aims at endpoint security with Tivoli-BigFix blend

IBM has announced a new initiative to focus on endpoint security for all computing systems, no matter how small.

The company will use Tivoli Endpoint Manager to roll out protection for enterprise client systems ranging from PCs to ATMs and point-of-sale devices.

IBM is integrating technology from its acquisition of BigFix last year with the Tivoli software to push security agents to up to 500,000 systems at a time.

"We look at endpoint management as involving any computing device that takes an operating system," Amrit Williams, director of emerging security technology at IBM Security Solutions, told V3.co.uk. "An endpoint is an endpoint, and IBM wants to manage it."

Williams explained that the BigFix engine will push out a software agent to each system, consisting of around 5MB of code. In tests, the agent took up about two per cent of the CPU to run in the background. IBM recently demonstrated such a system working on Android handsets.

Once installed, the agent monitors the security settings and policies of the device and can be managed from a central web console by administrators, who can set security policies, push out software updates or remotely wipe lost or stolen systems.

IBM is also researching the use of proxy agents on computer systems that do not have the ability to handle the software agent, either because they are too old or may crash owing to a conflict with the code. Communication via API or TCP/IP is being researched to deal with this issue.

"Agent-less management is something the market has been pursuing for some time," Scott Crawford, research director at Enterprise Management Associates, told V3.co.uk.

"This technology itself is not that much different from other approaches taken by the competition. The biggest advantage BigFix gives IBM is technology that is highly flexible and can do anything you need to do from a management perspective."

IBM has also teamed up with Juniper Networks to sell joint security services for Apple iOS, Android, Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows through Juniper's Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite.