The new Tivoli Federated Identity Manager software takes IBM’s portal technology to the next stage, according to Peter Jopling, IBM Head of Tivoli Security Solutions.
He said: By adding the federated ID technology, we can open a security dialog to access internal or third-party sources by transposing the security information of one secure environment to another secure environment, without the need for further use of passwords or identity data.
Federated ID management is a loosely coupled model for managing identity and access to resources that span different company networks or security domains. The intention is to allow organizations to share identity and policy data about users and services using a network of trust to vastly reduce the headache of user access management, and extend the benefits of the single sign-on process.
The price of the new software will not be confirmed until it goes into general availability on May 27, although there are reports of plans for it to be sold at $69 per user.
The system does not replicate user accounts, but instead uses trusted identity assertions to deliver access to shared IT services. The system is not reliant on use of the Tivoli framework, although it can operate within that for infrastructure management regime, Jopling confirmed.
It can be operated against ID management schema based on emerging standards and various initiatives for federated ID such as on Security Assertion Markup Language, Liberty Alliance, and the Microsoft and IBM-favored WS Federation, WS Security and WS Trust standards.
In the field, Tivoli Access Manager is used frequently to control access to Siebel CRM, SAP applications, and portals built using Plumtree, WebSphere or WebLogic software, and is used to provide a common security model for authentication, access control, single sign-on, and audit.
In this context, the use of Tivoli Identity Manager is intended to help reduce costs through self-service. It should also help improve business compliance by reducing security exposure.
