IBM&#39;s Liberty membership closing identity gap
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After months of flirting, IBM Corp has finally joined the industry-backed Liberty Alliance Project, potentially speeding interoperability between two rival sets of Web services specifications for federated identity.
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IBM on Tuesday said it has simplified the process for software vendors to qualify and participate as a partner, which gives them access to IBM&#39;s global-sales network and to financial support for co-marketing campaigns.
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IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it has reached an agreement with  the U.S.
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IBM Corp. and four partners on Wednesday announced what they call a "major breakthrough" in identity management designed to help business and government agencies protect assets, including IT systems and physical facilities, from unauthorized users.
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Big companies exploring ways to verify identities online
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The Liberty Alliance has announced a new president to head the organization designed to create open standards and business guidelines for federated identity management.
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In July 2003, IBM&#39;s chief executive, Samuel Palmisano, traveled to Beijing to explore the sale of the company&#39;s personal computer business.
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IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the release of its enterprise mashup technology, QEDWiki, on alphaWorks, IBM's online community which provides early adopters with access to new and emerging software technology from IBM research and development labs around the world.
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IBMÂ is acquiring Liberty Insurance Services, or LIS, which is the U.S. business process services operation of RBC Insurance, IBM and RBC announced Tuesday. LIS handles life insurance and annuity processing and administration, and will become a new IBM subsidiary focused on that service.
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IBM, Google, Microsoft, Verisign and Yahoo have joined the corporate board of the OpenID Foundation, giving a boost to the groupâs efforts to simplify the process of signing into Web sites.
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IBM's global services organization is adding "health check" services to its repertoire of technical services for SOA deployments, looking to assist users dealing with issues resulting from poor planning or partnerships with inexperienced or so-called proprietary IT vendors.The company also is offering its "identity-aware ESB," which is an enterprise service bus that combines existing IBM products to provide identity management capabilities.Health-check services and software will be offered in two workshops to be held at customer sites, featuring specialized diagnostics and triage capabilities to help identify potentially unhealthy areas and recommend cures for problem areas."We try to bring a real breadth of capability from the best practices that we've learned into these workshops," said Marie Wieck, vice president of middleware services at IBM.With some clients, IBM has had to perform somewhat of a rescue mission after clients have done an initial application and then had problems with scalability or performance, Wieck said.Workshops, which are priced in the $50,000 range or less, include IBM SOA Applications and Services and Healthcheck Workshop and Infrastructure Healthcheck Workshop for SOA. Both are 2.5-day engagements intended for midmarket and large enterprises.The applications and services workshop is intended to provide assurance that an SOA can expand beyond pilot projects. Factors such as application reuse and service use will be assessed, as will identification of rogue services as part of a governance policy. Security also will be checked for service controls and identity management.The infrastructure workshop features an assessment of infrastructure supporting applications and services layers in an SOA. Elements examined include infrastructure flexibility, the ability to adapt to spikes in demand, and verifying SOA configurations for connectivity. A service management review ensures that services are being monitored.IBM's identity-aware ESB combines WebSphere ESB products with Tivoli security and identity management software to help ensure that access to information, services, and applications is protected. Auditing of identity and access activity is enabled."Identity management is very critical so that you can ensure that only the right people get access to these services," Wieck said.An analyst briefed on IBM's efforts lauded both the SOA and ESB programs."Customers who have started with a SOA need checkpoints to have an outside source assess what they are doing and how it compares to best practices," said Judith Hurwitz, president of Hurwitz &amp; Associates. "Companies are investing a lot of money, resources, and political capital on SOA, and management wants to make sure they are on track and doing the right thing."Governance is a huge issue for customers in regards to SOA implementation. This is especially true since SOA is as much a business strategy as it is a technology strategy," Hurwitz said."In terms of ID-aware ESB ? clearly security and identity management are huge issues for companies because of governance issues related to security," she said.IBM offers information about its SOA programs at its Web site.Also on Monday, IBM is announcing an initiative to help business partners increase revenues and better serve customers. Grow Your Business (GYB) with IBM Software provides cross-brand sales scenarios across the IBM software group's product portfolio.The GYB tool recommends scenarios that utilize business partners' existing areas of expertise. Partners through the initiative can analyze software products, get descriptions of business value, and determine return on investment via an online tool. Information is aggregated into one place.An online guide to marketing and sales materials also is highlighted.
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Looking to extend its RSA division's authentication product line, EMC has purchased identity verification services vendor Verid.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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InfoWorld - Oracle on Wednesday announced a new project to tackle one of the thorniest problems facing enterprises: the proliferation of sensitive identity information across enterprise networks.
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Some are questioning the fit between the two companies from the perspective of open-source tools and APIs.
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IBM&#39;s business workhorse notebook gets a fingerprint reader and an upgraded suite of security tools. We take a first look. IBM&#39;s &#39;thin-and-light&#39; ThinkPad T42 already offers one of the most complete security solutions available on a notebook.
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DECEMBER 13, 2004  - Now that IBM plans to sell its PC division to Beijing-based Lenovo Group Ltd., the big question is whether the companies can keep users from defecting to other vendors -- which would put IBM&#39;s once standard-setting PCs
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(InfoWorld) - Oracle on Wednesday announced a new project to tackle one of the thorniest problems facing enterprises: the proliferation of sensitive identity information across enterprise networks. The Identity Governance Framework is an initiative to develop specifications for sharing identity data across heterogeneous applications. The project has the support of identity and access management (IAM) vendors Ping Identity, Sun Microsystems and Securent, as well as CA and Novell. The framework and will eventually be turned over to a standards-setting body, according to Amit Jasuja, vice president of product development for Oracle's security and identity management products. The Identity Governance Framework (IGF) grew out of Oracle's efforts to integrate identity and access management technology it acquired from Thor Technologies, OctetString and other companies, Jasuja said. "We realized that a solution that just works with the Oracle stack is not what customers need," he said. Instead, problems such as lost data on laptops and identity theft point to the need for overarching standards that govern all the sensitive data squirreled away in data repositories across an enterprise, such as human resources, customer relationship management and custom-built internal applications. Oracle estimates that between 60 and 80 percent of sensitive data reside in these kinds of repositories, rather than in better protected enterprise databases, he said. "Finding out where all that information is turns out to be a huge forensic exercise," Jasuja said. "You have to root through every application repository and application logic and code to figure out how the [sensitive data] is being used." IGF addresses that problem by establishing a governance model that allows organizations to create "contracts" between applications and repositories of identity data. The model would cover how data flows within an enterprise and outside the enterprise to supply chain or business partners, he said. IGF has the following four components: -- CARML, the Client Attribute Requirement Markup Language, is an XML-based language used by application developers to define contracts that specify how applications can use certain kinds of data. -- CARML API is an Application Programming Interface that application developers can use to consume identity data in a way that conforms to the policies that govern that data. -- AAPML or Attribute Authority Policy Markup Language, defines policy rules regarding the use of identity-related information from an identity source. -- Identity Service is a service for securely accessing identity data from multiple identity sources based on established policies.Â  Open source and standards groups, including Eclipse.org and OASIS, are also working on the problem of federating identity information, but OASIS' SPML (Service Provisioning Markup Language) and Eclipse's Higgins Trust Framework are more about creating consistent user identities that work between systems, rather than managing sensitive data, he said. "Nobody's asking whether I can propagate a social security number outside my country boundary and put it into system somewhere else," he said. Still, Oracle believes that IGF properly belongs under the umbrella of some standards setting organization, he said. The company plans to reach a deal to hand off its API, as well as AAPML and CARML work to such a group within the next 90 days or so. While Jasuja wouldn't say which group Oracle was considering. However, he acknowledged that a top concern is the speed with which the group can shepherd the IGF specifications through to standards. Both OASIS and Eclipse are possible partners for IGF. Notoriously slow IEEE is not high on the list of groups that might take over Oracle's work, he said. "Our goal is to take this into a standards organization as quickly as possible to get the (intellectual property) stuff figured out, and not sit around and waste a lot of time and energy," he said.