As businesses change the way they protect sensitive data, in line with regulatory compliance, Citrix and HP are jointly bringing identity management solutions to market.
The companies have announced an integration agreement that sees Citrix Password Manager operating and interfacing directly with the HP OpenView Identity and Access Management (IAM) suite. This allows them to tap into the $2.3 billion global access management market. The joining of these two forces will create a comprehensive solution, which will enable enterprises to provide complete, secure information access to employees, customers and partners worldwide. The agreement also builds on recent channel momentum with the VeriSign and Secure Computing endorsements of Citrix Password Manager.
The need for security
Organisations are faced with a growing number of users, accessing a mounting number of IT resources; with this comes the challenge of supporting secure access for each of them. For this reason, more businesses are turning to integrated enterprise single sign-on (Esso) solutions such as Password Manager to help increase IT security.
According to industry analysts, an estimated 25% of all help-desk calls are related to password problems, and businesses spend an average of $200 per employee annually on password management issues.
"The typical enterprise has security measures for updating passwords periodically. This places the burden on users to manually change their passwords, forcing them to create an entirely new password each time. This results in short or easy-to-remember password choices that can be easily compromised," says David Prosser, channel manager of Citrix Systems SA.
As IT responsibilities and security threats accumulate, Esso solutions create compelling benefits, including lower administrative costs, increased employee productivity and higher levels of security.
"A major benefit of this current integration is the ability for Citrix Password Manager to log a report within HP OpenView each time an event takes place," says Stephen Ivey, Alliance Account Manager at HP.
"This common audit capability helps customers track user access to any application as well as all password updates which is a key requirement of regulatory compliance."
The joint roadmap
As part of the IAM solution, HP will recommend Citrix Password Manager to OpenView customers. Enterprise employees will be able to utilise the IAM solution to access software easily and securely across their entire computing environments - from underlying network and infrastructure components to applications themselves. Manual authentication will not be necessary as users are authenticated once with a single password, automatically logging them into applications, Web sites and other network resources.
"Together with HP, we will define and manage a joint roadmap for future integration between Citrix Password Manager and the OpenView Identity Access Management suite to benefit our existing and new clients," concludes Prosser.
Share
Citrix Systems, Inc (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader in access infrastructure solutions and the most trusted name in secure access for enterprises and individuals. More than 160 000 organisations around the world use Citrix everyday. Our access software, services and appliances give people secure and well-managed access to business information wherever it lives - on demand. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies, 99% of the Fortune 500, and 97% of the Fortune Global 500. Based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Citrix has offices in 22 countries, and approximately 7 000 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. For more information, visit http://www.citrix.com.