Feature Story

By Chip Brookshaw

March 5, 2008 - Enterprise networks today reach all over the globe, and a variety of users require access to them, including employees, contractors and partners that require access to corporate information assets. Many of these users are outside the internal security domain yet must have transparent access to services to transact business or share information. It is important -- even critical -- to business operations that the network reach all of them, but the risks of unauthorized, even fraudulent, use are high.

Providing access while protecting assets is a challenge that organizations have to meet in order to operate their businesses securely. "Expanding reach and minimizing risk are in continual conflict," says Mark Herring, Sun's Vice President of Software Infrastructure Marketing. "Striking a balance between the two is critical to secure proprietary information and customer data and to maintain confidence as more people are added to a company's network."

The new risks of expanded network reach add to the need for strong identity management in order to ensure that people accessing the network are who they claim to be, and doing what they should be doing. In addition, government regulations concerning identity continue to expand, and stronger corporate policy management that impacts issues from human resource policies to intellectual property management also require strong identity management. And today every organization faces these challenges in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC).

The Growing Challenge of GRC

To meet the increasing need for GRC solutions, Sun is introducing Sun Role Manager, which is based on the RBACx product from Vaau, a company Sun acquired in February 2008. Sun Role Manager gives companies the tools they need to address issues relating to GRC across the organization, and it complements Sun's other identity management products. "We have incredible strength in identity management," says Herring. "Now, with role management technology, we can help enterprises with access control compliance, which is a critical part of GRC initiatives."

Large companies must provide -- and then audit -- access to applications for potentially tens of thousands or even millions of users, but adding GRC functionality to an already overburdened IT infrastructure can be a costly, manual process that strains staff and other resources. In addition, common business processes can make proper access control even more complex as employees come and go or change jobs within a company, and reorganizations, mergers, and acquisitions further fragment a seemingly solid access control plan.

The Value of Sun Role Manager

Sun Role Manager gives companies an effective tool to deal with the challenges of access control compliance because role management allows companies to manage access according to business roles rather than identification of individual entitlements assigned to users.

Sun Role Manager handles natural business processes smoothly by automating and streamlining access control and policy enforcement, and thus reducing the cost of compliance. Sun Role Manager also reduces administrative time, such as the time needed to perform access certification, by as much as one-third. This also means that users won't have to wait impatiently for approval to access the corporate resources they need to do their jobs. Their role identifies them, not their name, employee identification number, or anything else that is associated only with that person.

Sun Role Manager offers another vital benefit as well. By delivering effective role management, it bridges the traditional gap between business requirements and the demands of IT. In effect, it gets administrators and executives speaking the same language.

The Sun Advantage

In addition to its technical strengths, Sun Role Manager is a smart choice because it is part of Sun's industry-leading identity management portfolio. When combined with the other products in Sun's portfolio, Sun Role Manager gives IT a simple and affordable way to handle every identity management issue. Sun Role Manager is strongly supported by Sun services framework and backed by a Professional Services organization that focuses on your business needs, not technology for technology's sake.

Sun solutions have received high ratings from industry analysts, researchers, and the press. Customers have spoken favorably as well, by giving Sun a strong deployed customer base in identity management.

Find Out More

Sun's acquisition of Vaau combines leading-edge role management software with the expertise and experience of a global technology leader. As the demands of GRC threaten to consume ever more time and resources, Sun Role Manager helps keep IT a step ahead.