Quest today announced that they will acquire e-DMZ Security, a PxM (Privileged Access, Account, Identity, User Management) vendor. That comes to no surprise given that PxM has been one of the last (relatively) white spots at the IAM map of Quest Software. Quest is further completing its portfolio, being a full-service provider for IAM now and offering one of the most complete portfolios in the market.

The e-DMZ portfolio consists of several module, providing different types of PxM capabilities:

  • Managing passwords for privileged accounts in a central repository
  • Application password management to get passwords out of scripts and applications
  • Privileged session management to monitor and manage sessions of privileged users
  • Privileged command management with the capability to limit the commands allowed within sessions
With these features, Quest closes some gaps. Together with products like Quest Authentication Services, Quest One ActiveEntry, or Quest ActiveRoles Server, plus the monitoring capabilities provided by different Quest tools, Quest can provide a comprehensive set of features to manage all types of accounts and their access.

However, that will require (like with virtually any PxM platform) some integration work to be done given that customers have to work with several products. One-stop-shopping doesn’t necessarily lead to a single-step-installation. With the increasing number of tools, Quest will have to look on how to provide the balance between integration and modularity to its customers. Integration in the sense of providing well integrated solutions which are up and running quickly – and modularity with focus of the Quest approach to provide focused products instead of monstrous suites.

Whilst not being the most prominent vendor in the PxM market, e-DMZ security provides good support as well for UNIX/Linux as for Windows environments, which fits well into the Quest portfolio.