Vintela, a leading provider of innovative platform integration solutions, today announced new capabilities of Vintela Authentication Services (VAS) that enable system administrators to utilize and extend nested groups within Active Directory to Unix platforms. The new version of VAS 2.4 also addresses the need for system administrators in heterogeneous environments to migrate NIS information to Active Directory while at the same time provide backwards compatibility for existing NIS client applications. VAS 2.4 natively integrates Unix/Linux platforms with Microsoft's Active Directory. The VAS solution provides secure access and authentication for Unix and Linux environments. Using Kerberos, LDAP and other standards, these environments can now be seamlessly managed through Microsoft Active Directory. The solution eliminates key security vulnerabilities and end-user downtime, thus minimizing risks and lowering administrative costs for organizations.