HP today announced enhancements to its identity and access management software suite to help customers increase agility, reduce risk and cut costs in the area of security and compliance management.
Introduced at the Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit, the new integration initiatives and improved features of the HP Identity and Access Management (IdM) portfolio better automate changes to users’ rights, their access to services and the enforcement of business policies. This allows organizations to better align security policies with business goals.
HP IdM addresses an array of challenges, including the increasing numbers and types of users requiring access to internal resources, stringent regulatory demands for accurate reporting of user identities and access, and the constant flow of changes in user access.
Pay By Touch, the world leader in integrated biometric authentication, personalized marketing and payment solutions, uses the HP IdM solutions as a foundation for deploying its federated online authentication system called TrueMe™.
“Pay By Touch prides itself on offering the strongest, most secure and most convenient authentication services on the market, all of which are enabled by the underlying foundation of HP Identity and Access Management solutions,” said Jon Siegal, executive vice president, Pay By Touch. “We selected the HP Identity Management portfolio for the superior technologies, ease of deployment, compelling return on investment and unparalleled value it will continue to deliver.”
Within the enhanced HP IdM suite, HP Select Identity Software, HP Select Federation Software and HP Select Access Software have been seamlessly integrated with HP Select Audit Software to provide consolidated audit, attestation, monitoring, alerting, reporting and archiving capabilities. By centralizing and automating the entire audit lifecycle for both internal policies and regulations, the enhanced HP IdM portfolio enables customers to streamline, better automate and speed their ability to ensure .
HP Select Identity has also been integrated with HP Service Desk Software to automate, monitor and track the process of resetting user passwords in heterogeneous IT environments. When these requests are handled from within the Service Desk, customers will realize significant benefits such as enhanced security, reduced costs through automated password reset and self-service, and simplified compliance through automated control over configuration changes.
“Individually, these IdM offerings enable more efficient management of IT services and the users who rely on them; when combined into a seamlessly integrated solution, they enable organizations to optimize the business outcome of their identity and access management initiatives,” said Anas Jwaied, Director, Software Business Unit, HP Middle East.
For organizations that have adopted IT service management (ITSM) as a strategic direction, HP has integrated IdM user change processes with ITSM processes to increase efficiency and effectiveness.
Commenting on the integral relationship between business processes and IdM, a recent report by Gartner noted that, “Understanding that IAM (Identity Access Management) processes are driven by information security, operational and, above all, business needs rather than dictated by the functionality of a particular IAM product, allows much-more-effective use of such a product.”(1)
The HP IdM suite also has been enhanced to better integrate with customers’ existing IT environments. The new policy management application interface for HP Select Access will enable easy integration with custom applications by providing program developers open access to the interface. Additionally, HP Select Federation will provide WS-Federation support for Microsoft® Active Directory Federation Services integration.
HP also announced that HP Select Access will now be bundled with HP-UX 11i, simplifying user management with improved provisioning and manageability. This tool enables a single click to define and apply high-level security policies that accompany a specific role within an organization. For example, the tool automatically assigns system backup and restore rights when an employee joins the operations team and withdraws these privileges when the employee leaves.
The enhanced HP IdM products, offered as a full suite or sold individually, are currently available. More information on the portfolio is available at www.hp.com/go/software.
About HP
HP focuses on simplifying technology experiences for all of its customers – from individual consumers to the largest businesses. With a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure, HP is among the world’s largest IT companies, with revenue totaling $94.1 billion for the four fiscal quarters ended Jan. 31, 2007. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at www.hp.com.
About HP Middle East
HP is the largest technology and solutions provider in the Middle East with 670 employees and subsidiaries in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Jeddah, Khobar, Cairo, Ramallah, Oman and 2 service Joint Ventures in Kuwait and Bahrain servicing the GCC, Egypt and the Levant. HP has been present in the Middle East since 1968 and opened its first regional office in 1994. HP Middle East is the market leader for enterprise, small and medium business and consumer technology products and offers a large portfolio of solutions and services in various business domains.
More information about HP in the Middle East is available at www.hp.com/me
(1) Gartner, “Recommendations for Security Administration 2006,” Feb. 13, 2006.
