IBM is about to release version 2.0 of its Global Sign On (GSO) for Multiplatforms system for single log in for enterprises, heralded as part of a raft of security product announcements it made at last month’s RSA Data Security conference (CI No 3,330). This system is designed to ease the burden on help desks, which apparently report that the majority of calls from users concern the resetting of passwords. IBM’s Phyllis Byrne, VP of Distributed Systems Services for the IBM Networking Software division, contends that this has now become, a problem now sufficiently irritating for customers to spend money on it. The idea is that users end up draping their desks with lots of sticky notes holding passwords, which devalues the password approach in any case. The thing is aimed at granting one superpassword for accessing applications, files, printers and database servers anywhere in the enterprise. At first sight, you may wonder if this is all too much fuss about a fairly trivial problem – how much time do we in fact spend per day logging in? IBM counters by citing two surveys, one from the Network Applications Consortium (NAC) and another from the Securities Industries Association. The first report that suggests users spend between three and 44 hours a year getting into systems, which at an annual salary range of $25,000-$125,000 implies the annual cost of logging in could be as low as $100 or as high as $2,600. And that could be as high as $26m for a 10,000 user enterprise. The second study makes that an average of 44.4 hours, or six minutes a day, if that includes four separate applications. However useful these kind of statistics really are, IBM has added more server (NT, Sun Solaris), client (Windows 95), operating system (OS/400) and applications support (Lotus Notes, PeopleSoft), as well as integrated with Tivoli version 10 system management software. In the near future support for token and smart card innovation, biometric devices, access to web-based resources, lightweight Java clients and Novell LDAP directories are promised. Pricing starts at $99 per client and $1,999 per server.
