IBM announced that it has bolstered its risk management portfolio with the announcement of new security software designed to help clients manage user access to sensitive company information and simplify the process of compliance management.

Currently the worldwide leader in identity and access management revenue, according to analyst firm IDC, IBM advances its identity management software with the new availability of IBM Tivoli Identity Manager Version 5.0.

The IBM software takes a risk-based approach to help clients effectively manage user accounts, access permissions and passwords for employees, contractors and customers from creation to termination. It provides a centralized point for administering users, their passwords, business roles, and access rights - helping ensure that business and security policy is set on all systems and applications across the company.

Delivering the most extensive update in its history, new features and enhancements to IBM Tivoli Identity Manager are intended to greatly improve management of business policy compliance, accelerate and simplify set-up and deployment, and enhance productivity of identity management business users and IT administrators. With new "out-of-the-box" instructional wizards, templates and best practices that can speed time for deployments and reduce the learning curve of new users, customers are expected to benefit from an estimated 50 percent reduction in deployment time compared to previous releases.

Today's computing environments often contain thousands to millions of users and a multitude of databases, applications and systems. Automated identity management helps enterprises ensure the right people can access the right applications and information, such as company financial data or customer and employee information databases, as examples.

IBM Tivoli Identity Manager automates for enterprises the tedious, manual process of setting up new accounts and passwords for its employees and customers that might otherwise require a dedicated response from IT staff. It provides the ability for users to reset and synchronize their own passwords without going through a help desk, saving time for both the users and technical support. The software also can identify unauthorized and malicious changes that would give users access to more applications than necessary to do their jobs, remove the illegitimate access, and alert designated business leaders as these events occur.

"Identity and Access Management has become the necessary foundation for which broad risk management strategies are developed at organizations around the world," said Venkat Raghavan, director of strategy, IBM Tivoli security and storage software. "IBM Tivoli Identity Manager helps clients automate compliance controls around user access to company information and makes it easier for them to address audit needs when linked with audit and compliance management software, such as IBM Tivoli Compliance Insight Manager. With substantial new ease-of-use features and a business user-oriented approach that translates technical jargon into a more common language for auditors and business leaders, the new software also helps reduce the time and cost to manage clients' business compliance process."

The Ottawa Hospital (TOH), which provides care for more patients than any other Canadian hospital, relies on IBM software to manage user access within its portal project, "myTOH." With myTOH, the hospital's physicians and staff have immediate access, based on defined user privileges, to a wide range of information, such as e-mail, lab results, eHR and PACS images, from anywhere with a secure Internet connection. This has transformed the way TOH cares for its patients since quick access to lab results by a physician on the road or at home can translate into saved lives.

"In providing this improved ability to care for our patients, securing data was paramount. To ensure that 'who you are' and 'where you are' controlled what users could see and do, we leveraged IBM Tivoli Identity Manager and Tivoli Access Manager," said Jean-Pierre Nault, director of IT, The Ottawa Hospital. "By extending access to information from the staff's desks to anywhere around the world, we needed to focus on total user lifecycle management. Tivoli Identity Manager became the single source of truth for our over 12,000 identities which includes not just staff but students, contractors, physicians, residents and users from our regional partners. They are all now centrally managed, providing us with tighter security for hospital and patient information and a foundation for more easily addressing compliance."