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Accenture and Sun Microsystems Unveil New Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Security
April 2008 by Marc Jacob
Accenture and Sun Microsystems, Inc. unveiled new technology solutions, which make it easier and less costly for businesses and governments to protect their information systems from growing security threats.
Approximately a year ago, Accenture and Sun announced a partnership to build security solutions that could be deployed quickly while providing a high degree of identity assurance. The new solutions announced today are designed to help organizations take an extended enterprise-wide approach to security by providing pre-built, implementation-ready systems, which help reduce complexity and risk, while also reducing cost.
The Accenture Smart Identity Solution is a unique end-to-end system which meets client demands for both identity establishment and strong authentication. The solution merges physical and logical security, which includes biometric and smartcard technologies, as well as provisioning and access management into corporate applications, such as SAP. This advanced solution enriches the security of existing business applications, such as human resource programs, by imbedding robust biometric and biographic enrolment capabilities. The result is an automated, trusted enterprise-wide identity management process.
The convergence of physical and logical security requires multi-factor authentication, such as a smart card in addition to a password, to verify identity for systems and physical facilities. The Accenture Smart Identity Solution addresses this challenge by enabling different types of multi-factor authentication based on user populations and customer requirements, including non-biometric, non-smart card and tokenless access. This is a key enhancement that offers clients stronger authentication for users accessing both local and remote system.
The Accenture Smart Identity Solution draws upon the advanced technology and business processes of four other jointly-developed solutions that are also offered separately and include:
The Accenture Enterprise Identity Management Solution provides tighter management of and control access to enterprise applications by enhancing enterprise IT security. The solution includes a production-ready identity management system, which can trim implementation costs by as much as 20 percent.
The Accenture Solution for Control and Compliance integrates Sun’s identity-management products with SAP’s governance, risk and compliance solutions, helping to close security gaps through the implementation of stringent compliance and control processes. The benefit for clients is improved risk management and governance at the enterprise level.
The Accenture SOA Jumpstart Solution for Sun Java(TM) CAPS provides organizations with increased flexibility while reducing the time to develop and deploy SOA-based solutions, accelerating the Sun platform. Through this solution, clients can reduce costs by as much as 40 percent.
The Accenture Secure SOA Solution helps organizations achieve the benefits of SOA by opening up their IT systems to partners, suppliers and customers while addressing associated security, governance and scalability challenges.
The solutions have been piloted with clients and are showcased at the Accenture Technology Lab in Sophia Antipolis, France and at the Accenture Smart Identity Center in Reston, VA.
The solutions were built using Sun Java(TM) System Identity Management Suite, Sun Java(TM) Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS), Solaris(TM) Operating System and Sun Java(TM) System Portal Server.
The Accenture Smart Identity Solution was developed at the Accenture Smart Identity Center. The other solutions were developed at the Accenture Innovation Center for Sun Microsystems Solutions, which develops and delivers systems for identity-enabled SOA and composite applications.
