IBM offers new federated identity system

New ID management tool from IBM could end sign on woes

IBM has launched new federated identity management software designed to help firms securely connect to trading partners over the web and benefit from single sign-on.

IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway is targeted at companies with up to 5,000 employees. It is designed to let users sign on once, and then access a range of corporate applications and third-party services via a SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) token, according to Peter Jopling, head of Tivoli Security Solutions for IBM in Europe.

“At the moment, users need different passwords and IDs to log on to multiple portals,” Jopling said. “Now they can download a SAML token and sign-in automatically to third-party portals, with the same security underpinning this.”

IBM already offers Federated Identity Manager for large enterprises, which is also based on standards such as SAML and WS-services to authorise and authenticate users. Jopling said that with the new product, IBM has simplified the architecture required to deploy federated single sign-on.

“The gateway is entry-level technology for smaller firms that don’t need a full-blown architecture to support third-party services access,” Jopling said. “They can talk to any firm using SAML tokens and, in turn, the third party can understand what that user can do on their systems.”

Jopling added that part of the reason for offering the lightweight version is to help small and medium-sized firms that need to connect securely over the internet to larger partners and are getting pressure to deploy these types of authentication systems.

“There have been leaps in interest this year due to the Government Gateway project, which will expose the backbone of government systems to let local authorities get access to central government services,” he added.

Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway is available in the UK now, priced at £30,000 to £40,000 for the server, irrespective of the number of users.