CA Identity Manager to help reduce IT security costs while improving compliance processes

CA, Inc today announced the planned release of CA Identity Manager. Designed to manage identity lifecycles from creation to modification to removal across mainframe, distributed and Web environments, CA Identity Manager Release 12 will deliver new capabilities to help reduce the complexity and cost of an identity management deployment, while enhancing an organisation's ability to comply with legal, corporate and government regulations.

CA Identity Manager is one of three CA identity and access management (IAM) products announced today.

These three products - CA Identity Manager, CA Access Control Premium Edition and a new product, CA Security Compliance Manager - join seven other CA IAM products announced in October and November 2007 as part of CA IAM r12. The IAM r12 products are designed to help manage the identity lifecycle, and provide robust IT security controls, analysis and proof of compliance, and automation of compliance processes.

"Many of the new capabilities in CA Identity Manager r12 were driven by customer feedback and need. For example, by simplifying the architecture, we have reduced deployment time and improved the time-to-value from an identity management system; and by integrating CA Identity Manager with the new CA Security Compliance Manager, we plan to help customers better meet compliance demands," said Karel Rode, Principal Consultant of the Security Practice at CA South Africa.

"CA Identity Manager r12 along with other CA IAM r12 products are designed to deliver an integrated IAM solution with the breadth and depth of capability to address the growing need to unify the management of identities for employees, partners and customers."

In a February 2008 report, "Identity Management Market Forecast: 2007 to 2014,"* Forrester analysts estimate the market for identity and access management will grow to more than $12.3 billion in 2014, with provisioning accounting for 64% of market revenue.

Driven by business needs and initiatives such as security, regulatory compliance, user productivity and cost reduction, IAM technologies are gaining recognition for the value they deliver to IT and security organisations charged with helping to satisfy those business demands.

"We have been using CA's identity management solution for several years and are looking forward to the new functionality introduced by CA Identity Manager r12. Our identity management deployment is currently supporting approximately 90 000 employees from the mainframe to the distributed environment so the scalability of the product is critical for us," said Paolo Ginevro, IAM Project Manager, Unicredit. "We also anticipate the CA Identity Manager r12 reporting framework will support our compliance initiatives and help provide demonstrable IT security controls and facilitate proof of compliance."

The future release of CA Identity Manager is scheduled to deliver several important enhancements and capabilities, including:

* Streamlined architecture, installation, and administration - CA Identity Manager r12 continues to provide superior scalability and will introduce a more unified infrastructure to significantly streamline installation and configuration, helping to save customers both time and money. Plans for release 12 also include more granular provisioning to enable finer-grained entitlements management and automation controls to help improve administration.

* Expanded support for IT environments - CA Identity Manager r12 is designed to help improve return on investment through improved integration and customisation capabilities. As planned, CA Identity Manager r12 will continue to offer out-of-the-box connectors for standard, enterprise applications such as Active Directory, SAP and others. The Connector Xpress utility is designed to help customers build connectors to custom systems through a wizard-based interface rather than writing code. In addition, every CA Identity Manager function within the user interface is designed to be exposed as a Web service, enabling customers to easily embed identity management functions into interfaces that users are already familiar with.

* Expanded reporting - Identity management solutions improve an organisation's security posture by establishing consistent and audited provisioning processes. CA Identity Manager r12 plans include improved reporting capabilities that help a business understand the status of their identity management deployment. With planned additional out-of-the-box reports, an open reporting foundation, and standard integration with Business Objects, CA aims to provide the flexibility to meet a variety of reporting requirements. CA Identity Manager r12 reports highlight both events-based data - what a user did in the past - and entitlements-based data - what a user has the ability to do - to help meet compliance demands.

* Standards support - Plans for CA Identity Manager include support for IPv6, the newest version of Internet Protocol which expands the Internet address space, and FIPS140-2, which outlines US government security cryptography standards.

Whether customers are working with systems integrators and solution providers on their identity management programs or directly with CA and its services team to deploy products and solutions using its Rapid Implementation services, CA Identity Manager r12 is designed to deliver technical capabilities to assist with speedy deployment.

"Identity management deployments are complex initiatives and naturally we strive to work with vendors whose solutions help ease deployment, with ease of maintenance," said Deborah Golden, principal, Security & Privacy Services, Deloitte & Touche LLP. "We've helped many clients successfully deploy CA identity management products. The planned enhancements to CA Identity Manager can make it an attractive option for customers who are looking for rapid deployment or want to embed identity management into existing systems."

CA Identity Manager is among eight new and updated products announced by CA today that are designed to help customers lower IT operations costs, manage risk, and improve security and compliance processes. The products support CA's Enterprise IT Management (EITM) vision by providing customers with capabilities to better govern, manage and secure IT for better business results.

For further information about CA's Identity and Access Management products, please visit http://ca.com/us/it-security-solutions.aspx.

* Forrester Research, "Identity Management Market Forecast: 2007 to 2014," Andras Cser and Jonathan Penn, with Paul Stamp, Allison Herald, and Alissa Dill, 6 February 2008.