Media Coverage Roundup | BeyondTrust Acquires Blackbird Group

Today we announced the acquisition of Blackbird Group, a leader in Windows system management. With this addition, BeyondTrust furthers our vision to simplify IT security operations management, while providing customers much-needed context to improve decision-making to protect against both internal and external security threats. We're happy to welcome the Blackbird Group! Read the official announcement now.

Want to learn more?
We will be hosting a public webcast on Tuesday, December 18th from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PST, open to all those interested in gaining better control of their Active Directory deployments. Any current and former customers of NetPro Computing and Quest Software are invited to attend, as well. Register for this webcast now.

I also wanted to share some of the coverage we've seen so far from our announcement, we'll be updating this post as more coverage comes in so be sure to check back.

WindowsITPro | BeyondTrust Acquires Blackbird Group By: Caroline Marwitz “Having previously led NetPro Computing, I understand the importance Active Directory plays within the enterprise,” said Kevin Hickey, president and chief operating officer at BeyondTrust. “We’re excited to continue the development of Blackbird’s product line and provide a solid, seamless integrated management approach to Windows infrastructure.” [...] "The Blackbird acquisition adds to the BeyondTrust product portfolio to unlock the value of AD as the authoritative identity store, and it fulfills the company’s vision of context-aware security intelligence," said BeyondTrust vice president of marketing, Mike Puterbaugh. Read Entire Article CMSWire | BeyondTrust Acquires BlackBird Group, Improves Enterprise Security By: Marisa Peacock Overall, with BeyondTrust and Blackbird, customers will benefit from being able to minimize deployment costs and administrator training, simplifying compliance and reduced data loss with real-time auditing and alerting across Active Directory and File resources, as well as increased visibility and improved decision making over native tools. All together, it means extra layers of security and protection from malicious attacks and inadvertent changes. Read Entire Article

The Var Guy | Security Vendor BeyondTrust Acquires Blackbird Group By: Christopher Tozzi BeyondTrust’s focus on improving AD management via real-time auditing and compliance technology underlines the demand for value-added products that provide functionality well beyond the basic AD tools offered by Microsoft. In an age when AD has become so ubiquitous–not to mention cross-platform, providing the infrastructure for managing not only Windows machines but also Mac OS X and Unix computers that were not always designed with AD integration in mind–the channel remains ripe for solutions that extend AD and make it useful for modern enterprise deployments. Read Entire Article MSPmentor | IT Security Specialist BeyondTrust Buys Blackbird Group By: CJ Arlotta BeyondTrust plans on supporting customer investments in Active Directory. “We see many of our customers deploying Powerbroker Identity Services and other Powerbroker solutions that rely on, and unlock the value of Active Directory as an authoritative Identity Store — providing access to both on-premise and cloud based applications,” said Hibbert. “It is only natural that BeyondTrust wants to help organizations better protect these identity investments with real-time auditing, recovery, and protection with these best of breed management and compliance solutions.” Read Entire Article SecurityWeek | BeyondTrust Acquires Blackbird Group By: Mike Lennon “BeyondTrust will leverage the Blackbird product line to drive additional context and awareness around Active Directory and infrastructure components by offering real-time auditing capabilities for both privileged and normal users,” the company said in a statement. “This combination with result in accelerated compliance reporting, as organizations will now be able to demonstrate controls of where individuals have access and what they are doing with that access,” the statement continued. Read Entire Article InfoSecurity | BeyondTrust purchases Windows system management specialist BeyondTrust said it will use Blackbird’s Windows system management product line “to drive additional context and awareness round Active Directory and infrastructure components by offering real-time auditing capabilities” for all categories of an organization’s users. This, the company hopes, will accelerate compliance reporting and allow customers to have real-time visibility over user access and auditing. Read Entire Article Xconomy | BeyondTrust Acquires NY’s Blackbird Group, Deepens AD Security The deal poses a fresh challenge to Quest, the Aliso Viejo, CA, software company acquired by Dell, which has been Blackbird’s main competitor in AD systems management. Read Entire Article The 451 Group | BeyondTrust reaches for Blackbird to bolster its security management capabilities The company is not only pursuing Quest and NetIQ, but is also posing a threat to its privileged identity management, access monitoring and 'compliance management' rivals. Read Entire Article Redmond Channel Partner | BeyondTrust Acquires Blackbird Group By Jeffrey Schwartz Blackbird Group gives BeyondTrust complimentary tools designed to further monitor and enforce policies via Active Directory. The Blackbird Management Suite provides real-time auditing of Active Directory, as well as SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server and the Windows file system. Read Entire Article Dark Reading | BeyondTrust Acquires Blackbird Group "Blackbird has been singularly focused on helping our customers demonstrate compliance and drive efficiencies to decrease the cost of IT management," said Christian Ehrenthal, founder and chief executive officer of Blackbird. "BeyondTrust's leadership position in the security and compliance markets, along with their impressive sales and marketing leverage, creates this exciting opportunity to join forces.” Read Entire Article Socaltech.com | BeyondTrust Buys Blackbird Group Carlsbad-based security software developer BeyondTrust said Wednesday that it has acquired Blackbird Group, a developer of Windows system management products. Financial details of the acquisition were not announced. BeyondTrust said the acquisition will help it add to its product portfolio, specifically around Active Directory. Blackbird's products will help BeyondTrust increase real-time auditing capabilities for Active Directory, Microsoft's unified identity software. Read Entire Article DowJones | BeyondTrust Beefs Up Compliance Offerings With Blackbird Buy By: Scott Denne BeyondTrust Software Inc. has acquired Blackbird Group Inc. to add security auditing to its security software suite. Read Entire Article U-T San Diego | Carlsbad's BeyondTrust continues buying spree By: Mike Freeman New York-based Blackbird focuses on Windows system management solutions, giving companies information about where individuals have corporate network access and what they are doing with that access. The real-time auditing will be fed into BeyondTrust’s risk analytics software, which pinpoints potential internal and external threats. Read Entire Article