Feature Story

By PJ Bate

April 22, 2008 — Whether your business operates in the private or the public sector, mastering the ability to secure enterprise IT systems is one of the most critical challenges for IT executives around the world. Technology advancements and an enterprise-wide approach to identity management are paving the way for new solutions — from physical access to the password login.

Accenture and Sun recently unveiled pre-built, field-tested solutions that reduce security complexity, risk, and costs. The new technology solutions enable an enterprise-wide approach to security and SOA that make it easier and less expensive for businesses and governments to protect their growing information and security systems from increasing security threats.

Convergence Drives Demand

Several important trends are converging, thus driving the demand for integrated solutions that tie strong and trusted identity access rights to privileges across the entire logical and physical enterprise. To address these trends, Sun and Accenture developed the Accenture Smart Identity Solution.

As part of their new technology solutions, the Accenture Smart Identity Solution connects existing applications, such as human resource programs, with biometric and biographic enrollment capabilities. The jointly developed solution incorporates identity establishment and strong authentication — including biometric and smartcard technologies — coupled with provisioning and access management technologies. The result is an automated, trusted identity management process that is carried throughout the enterprise.

Accenture and Sun use their combined expertise to provide this cost-effective, cutting-edge solution to organizations that need to address:

• Border management and illegal immigration issues


• International commerce, identity and benefit fraud


• Fragmented identity schemes


• Identity theft


• Extended enterprises: customers, suppliers, and contractors requiring access to enterprise applications


• Mobile technologies, adding security complexity


• Compliance with country-based regulatory frameworks

The solution provides multi-factor authentication for managing user access to systems and physical facilities — requiring (for example) a user to have two forms of identification, such as a smart card in addition to a password, to verify identity. This stronger authentication for users accessing both local and remote systems is a key enhancement that can significantly improve security.

The Accenture Smart Identity Solution joins four other Sun and Accenture, jointly-developed solutions to provide an enterprise-wide approach to security and SOA, enabling governments and enterprises to exchange information among employees, customers, and partners while protecting and managing access to their mission-critical assets.

The solutions — based on the Sun Java System Identity Management Suite, Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS), Solaris Operating System, and Sun Java System Portal Server, include the Accenture Enterprise Identity Management Solution, Accenture Solution for Control and Compliance, Accenture SOA Jumpstart Solution for Sun Java CAPS and Accenture Secure SOA.

About the Solutions