Delinea has announced an extension of its cloud suite to help provide better management solutions for Linux user groups.

The new technology expansion allows customers to add users from cloud directories to existing local groups on Linux systems. The company says this will create more efficient and secure access for all parties involved.

Delinea's PAM technology and cloud suite allows enterprises to secure critical data, devices, code, and cloud infrastructure to help reduce risk. With the new expansion allowing Linux capability, users will now be able to experience a centralised administrative experience for greater efficiency and control over secure data and workload.

On Windows and Linux machines, local user groups collect user accounts into manageable units, streamlining access management. However, when systems run into the hundreds or thousands, managing local groups on each system becomes a significant challenge and disruption.

While Windows has Active Directory groups, Linux has no comparative system. This leaves users open to operational overhead and the potential to over-provision users, which increases the risk of a data breach.

Delinea SVP of product management Jon Kuhn says that the new expansion will help companies solve many of the common issues associated with access management in this space.

"Cloud Suite now solves a huge identity and access management (IAM) and PAM challenge for IT and DevOps teams by centralising administration of both user identity and local group memberships," he says.

"As members are centrally defined in the platform, they are dynamically added to the appropriate local groups ensuring local data and file access permissions are enforced. This added functionality continues to extend the principles of just-in-time and just-enough-access across hybrid and cloud infrastructures, which is increasingly business-critical for elastic environments where resources continuously fluctuate and ease-of-use is paramount."

Kuhn also says that with the rapid change and demand for PAM systems, central governance and management are becoming crucial tools for companies across the globe. He says the cloud suite capabilities support transformation through a modern, hands-on approach.

"As we move toward centralised management and governance, Delinea solutions aim to support large-scale cloud transformation initiatives requiring a modern approach to PAM due to new hybrid cloud dynamics," he says.

"The group membership management capabilities of Cloud Suite now also offer an ancillary benefit of increased security by making rapid, responsive group membership permissions changes during a cybersecurity incident."

Other new capabilities in the Delinea Cloud Suite 22.1 release include allowing the machine to perform privileged tasks without logging in. Predefined tasks can be executed on a system remotely, dependent on their identity and entitlements and successful login to the platform. Delinea Gateway Connectors now also support Windows Server 2022.