BMC Bolsters Identity Suite

BMC Software Inc. this week will unveil its upgraded identity management software and new products that the company claims will make it easier to link network security policies to user identities.

The Houston company plans to launch Identity Management Suite 5.0 later this month, along with three new products: BMC Identity Discovery, BMC Identity Compliance Manager and BMC Federated Identity Manager. The update to the suite, which BMC unveiled in June, integrates technology that BMC acquired earlier this year from Calendra and Open Networks Inc. and makes good on a BMC plan to integrate its identity management and business service management products, said Somesh Singh, vice president and general manager of BMCs identity management business unit.

The release fulfills a promise BMC made in June, when it unveiled a road map to deliver a common graphical interface for its Identity Management Suite and expand its product capabilities in areas such as access management, password management, and user administration and provisioning.

A new tool, BMC Identity Discovery, allows BMC customers to link to the companys CMDB (Configuration Management Database), a repository for information on hardware and software assets that will now also contain user identity data, BMC said.

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Another new product, BMC Identity Compliance Manager, integrates with the companys identity management wares and allows customers to monitor user access and security policies. The products graphical dashboard allows auditors to view and test compliance with regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Graham-Leach-Bliley Act, Singh said.

BMC Federated Identity Manager lets users streamline access and authentication for customers, business partners and other third parties using federated identity standards such as SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language), WS-Federation and the Liberty Alliances Liberty ID-FF, the company said.

Government and Payment Card Industry regulations compelled Michaels Stores Inc. to look at identity management solutions, said Rick Wenban, a senior consultant at Michaels.

The Irving, Texas, retailer is evaluating BMCs new Identity Management Suite and plans to deploy Version 3.2 of the companys ControlSA Identity Management product this month, replacing a decentralized user access system for the companys Windows, AS400 and AIX systems.

The new system will help Michaels with user provisioning and IT asset tracking, which are required by SarbOx regulations, as well as the Payment Card Industry standards backed by Visa and MasterCard.

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