The Identity Management market space is continuing to change. Large vendors are gobbling up smaller niche players and alliances are being formed that bring identity management vendors together to provide total solutions for our customers.
In a recent webinar on the future of Identity Management at Sun Microsystems, a representative of Sun mentioned some of the vendors they have partnered with to provide identity management solutions. One particular vendor that has received "highly favored vendor status" with Sun is ActivIdentity. This company produces a suite of products that are based around the user and managing their access to the corporate enterprise. These include smart cards, use of biometric devices, SSO at the desktop, etc. The combination of Sun’s identity management capabilities with the ActivIdentity smart card approach to access management allowed the two companies to create a single solution for managing both network and physical access.
According to a white paper I read, the solution addresses the following:
• Combines user provisioning capabilities of Sun Java™ System Identity Manager with proven smart card solutions provided by ActivIdentity Card Management System (CMS) and Enterprise Single Sign-On. This provides one point of control over user credentials for access to physical or network resources.
• Provides single sign-on capabilities from Sun Java System Access Manager and ActivIdentity SecureLogin SSO to enable strong authentication to Web-based and/or non-Web applications.
• Provides scalable, secure directory services for the ActivIdentity CMS through Sun Java System Directory Server Enterprise Edition.
With the joint solution, a user can be issued a single smart card that can be employed to access physical facilities as well as log in to the desktop operating system, corporate portal, and authorized enterprise applications (HR, expense reporting, and so forth).
Did you know that this product is already deployed (or currently being deployed) in Governmental Departments? This provides them with SSO to email, Internet access, and access to secure facilities world wide.
Submitted by: Bill Nelson, Vice President of Education and Business Services
