IBM Identity and Access Management Solutions

IBM offers a comprehensive identity and access management solution that enables clients to provide authorized users to access applications and data in a cost effective manner while protecting these assets against unauthorized access.

Drawing on a deep understanding of today's security threats from both within and outside the enterprise, IBM provides a unified strategy for developing enterprise security solutions. Identity and Access management represents a modular entry point for IBM Security solutions, with a standards-based approach that integrates access authorization and identity management.

Helping to protect assets and information without affecting business productivity, IBM solutions for identity and access management can enable companies to address their enterprise security needs, reduce costs, and improve user experience, increase efficiencies and support compliance.

Customers need a solution that enables clients to provide authorized users to access applications and data in a cost effective manner while protecting these assets against unauthorized access. So, your organization needs ways to answer a number of questions related to access control:

• Provisioning - Is every user account on every resource valid? Is user access configured correctly to every resource? And does it stay that way?
• Productivity - Are users efficiently gaining access to valid resources?
• Access - Are access policies and data disclosure rules implemented consistently across every application, data source and operating system?
• Audit - How can the organization identify inappropriate access by privileged and trusted users? How can it find inappropriate access to database management system resources?

Looking at the IBM strategy for identity and access management in greater detail, you will see that IBM offers a number of different identity and access solutions. Depending on the organization, the security management strategy typically supports one or both of the following management capabilities:

Identity management
Managing user identities and their rights to access resources throughout the identity life cycle is the critical to effective identity and access management. An integrated solution should include the key areas of identity management:

• Identity life-cycle management, including user self-care, enrollment and provisioning
• Identity control, including access and privacy control, as well as single sign-on (SSO) and auditing

Access authorization
Access authorization should provide timely access throughout the user's life cycle - across multiple environments and security domains - while enforcing security and protecting the IT environment from external threats. Accordingly, an access management solution should provide:

• Centralized control to ensure consistent execution of security policies across multiple applications and users.
• Automation with a policy-based security infrastructure guided by both IT requirements and business goals.
• Single Sign-On (SSO) to improve user experience and reduce help-desk costs.
• Integration of access and identity management within one infrastructure environment.
• Identity federation to share user authentication and attribute information between trusted Web services applications.

Products and Services

White paper

Effectively manage access to systems and information to help optimize integrity and facilitate compliance. Consistent access management and identity management protect data integrity and facilitate compliance. IBM identity and access management solutions help you cost-effectively provide authorized users with access while protecting applications and data. Register now to download

Solution Sheets

Provide access control with innovative solutions from IBM (451 KB) Manage user identities efficiently to help increase administrator and user productivity, while facilitating compliance initiatives (452 KB)