HPQ: HP Drives Customer Agility Up, Costs Down with Latest Identity Management Software

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 compliance.

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 Deborah Traub, vice president, Product Strategy – Management Products, Software, HP.

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 expected to be available by the end of the year. More information on the portfolio is available at www.hp.com/go/software