IBM Corp is promising to simplify the number of passwords that users have to remember with the announcement of a Global Sign-On Wednesday. Currently available as a beta product from IBM’s Web site (www.networking. ibm.com/sso/ssohome.html), the product will initially be available for Windows NT 4.0 and OS/2 Warp 3.x and Warp 4.x clients, with a Windows 95 client to follow in October, and will access a central database of log on IDs and passwords held on a server running under AIX, NT or Sun Solaris. This login server will then provide access to NetWare 3.x and 4.x, OS/2 Warp Server and LAN Server, Windows NT 4.0 Server and mainframe applications and Oracle, Sybase, DB2/6000, Informix, or SQL Server databases. Passwords for Lotus Notes, any DCE Distributed Computing Environment-compatible applications, and custom built applications will also be stored in the Global Sign-On database. Managing the password database from the Tivoli TME systems management environment framework will be possible by the end of this year, and there will also be support for smart cards, says Alfred Spector, IBM’s general manager of transaction processing systems and chairman of IBM subsidiary Transarc Corp. The first release uses MIT’s Kerberos V5 authentication server for security. Global Sign-On forms part of IBM’s DCE, which is to be renamed DS Series at the end of this year.
