Access management

In a security lifecycle, IBM® Security Identity Manager and several other products provide access management. You can determine who can enter your protected systems. You can also determine what can they access, and ensure that users access only what they need for their business tasks.

Access management addresses three questions from the business point of view:

  • Who can come into my systems?
  • What can they do?
  • Can I easily prove what they did with that access?

These products validate the authenticity of all users with access to resources, and ensure that access controls are in place and consistently enforced:

  • IBM Security Identity Manager

    Provides a secure, automated, and policy-based user management solution that helps effectively manage user identities throughout their lifecycle across both legacy and e-business environments. IBM Security Identity Manager provides centralized user access to disparate resources in an organization, with policies and features that streamline operations associated with user-resource access. As a result, your organization realizes numerous benefits, including:

    • Web self-service and password reset and synchronization; users can self-administer their passwords with the rules of a password management policy to control access to multiple applications. Password synchronization enables a user to use one password for all accounts that IBM Security Identity Manager manages.
    • Quick response to audits and regulatory mandates
    • Automation of business processes related to changes in user identities by providing lifecycle management
    • Centralized control and local autonomy
    • Enhanced integration with the use of extensive APIs
    • Choices to manage target systems either with an agent or agentless approach
    • Reduced help desk costs
    • Increased access security through the reduction of orphaned accounts
    • Reduced administrative costs through the provisioning of users with software automation
    • Reduced costs and delays associated with approving resource access to new and changed users

For more information about how access management products fit in larger solutions for a security lifecycle, see the IBM Security Management website: http://www.ibm.com/security/

IBM Redbooks® and Redpapers also describe implementing IBM Security Identity Manager within a portfolio of IBM security products.