SOUTHFIELD ? The former Computer Associates now rebranded CA has rolled out its latest product software suite, an Identity Manager to help companies track and control IT users more securely.
CA Identity Manager taps the expertise of CA?s recent acquisition of Netegrity to unify identity management from the web to the mainframe unifying and simplifying the administration of internal and external users and what they can access on the corporate computer network.
?Organizations are finding it difficult to meet simultaneously the needs of the business, ensure information security, comply with data privacy regulations, and keep costs down,? said Toby Weiss, senior vice-president and general manager of CA?s security management business unit. ?CA Identity Manager directly addresses these challenges by automating identity-related management processes.?
Leveraging technology from CA?s acquisition of Netegrity, Identity Manager unifies identity management across the entire enterprise ? from the web to the mainframe ? to streamline and simplify administration of internal and external users and their entitlements. This helps ensure that IT systems are under control and that business processes are conducted in accordance with enterprise policies.
The new product was announced at the supplier?s CA World user conference and is part of a new line of products that help form the company?s enterprise IT management portfolio.
?Best practice IT governance and compliance requires disciplined policy definition, reliable policy enforcement, and credible compliance documentation,? said Chris Christiansen, an analyst at IDC. ?By addressing these three IT requirements in a single solution, CA has demonstrated a clear understanding of how enterprise organizations need to leverage identity management technology.?
Deborah Golden, a consultant at Deloitte & Touche, said compliance efforts are now boardroom discussions with chief information officers faced with mitigating risk from such new regulations as Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II, and HIPAA, while keeping costs within budget.
?Identity management is one of the areas which help executives deliver this value,? she said.
Key CA Identity Manager capabilities include:
Flexible Security Policies ? Identity Manager enables security administrators to flexibly define security policies and automate their enforcement. They also can ensure that application entitlements are appropriately defined.
Business Driven Entitlements ? To ensure that users? identities and access rights comply with corporate policies, Identity Manager can readily be configured to periodically require managers to re-certify user entitlements, for example, by requiring that user access to critical systems, such as payroll, be re-certified every quarter, while access to less critical systems can be re-certified annually.
Compliance Reporting ? Identity Manager?s comprehensive, out-of-the-box reports support corporate compliance efforts by documenting that identity controls are in place and working as intended.
Web Services Interface ? Identity Manager allows identity management to be deployed as a Web service, providing a standards-based, centrally deployed and managed method for programmatically initiating identity management actions. This further facilitates the broad roll-out of identity management services with minimal impact to applications and the developers that build and maintain them.
User Self-Service and Password Management ? Identity Manager enables users to manage their own profile, password and entitlements through self-service capabilities, forgotten password support, bi-directional password synchronization, GINA (Graphical Identification and Authentication) support, and automatic enforcement of periodic password changes.
Identity Manager is part of CA?s eTrust Identity and Access Management Suite, which includes Web access control, enterprise single sign-on, identity administration, user provisioning, user directory, identity federation, and Web services security.
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