Oracle announces next evolution in identity management

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

Building on its commitment to help customers easily manage all their identity and access requirements with an open, complete and integrated solution that is proven to scale, Oracle announced the launch of Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2, the next evolution of the Oracle Identity Management platform.

Simultaneously, Oracle also launched the Oracle Privileged Account Manager which provides advanced administrative and provisioning capabilities, streamlining password management for high risk accounts and increased security.

Today’s enterprises face new challenges as they drive growth and reduce costs — from driving consumer adoption with simplified customer registration and access through social networking and delivering compelling and secure access for mobile applications to managing cloud infrastructures as if they were on-premise applications — requiring a new level of identity management protection.

Addressing a media gathering, Oracle Corporation Asia Pacific Enterprise Security Regional Sales Director Siva Belasamy stated that Oracle now spends a lot of time educating larger enterprises and is working towards understanding the security requirements of enterprises across different platforms, with Oracle owning more than 70 per cent of the applications market today. “Looking at where we are today, we are heavily into application security silos – sets of functionalities built into applications to secure security. Either you build tools, work with vendors like Oracle or buy off-the-shelf software. However the problem today is that large organisations do not think about the security function – business operations always gets higher priority,” he acknowledged.

This results in problems cropping up halfway through projects. He noted that every time an organisation brings in new applications, new servers are brought into support it which come inbuilt with security silos and ensures that each user has a username and password but as more applications are brought in, problems arise.

“Currently, just by bringing in new applications, users get frustrated by having to remember different usernames and passwords and the problems don’t stop here. These are common problems in enterprises and it is precisely these issues that our new products hope to address. Oracle is also working on a single unified security platform through which users can use one password to log into several applications,” Belasamy revealed.

Drawing upon the example of financial institutions, he pointed out that they usually have to comply with several security regulatory requirements and when they start bringing in new applications which are financially based, such organisations have to make sure that the software meets regulatory requirements. Else they may fail their audit – this is another issue on an enterprise level.

He cautioned that if this security requirement is not addressed, it will be difficult to encourage people to come into the country to do business, noting that Sri Lanka needs to focus on modernising security platforms.  “Oracle has the most comprehensive security platform today which minimises the total cost of ownership, has single open standards, operate with just one password and ensures that IT staff need to be trained in only one skill set. We provide the complete stack to embark on new application projects,” Belasamy said.

“IT is no longer a supporting infrastructure, it is now a business tool. Security is not different from one industry to another although the motivation may be different and all industries use applications today. In terms of Oracle’s security business in Sri Lanka, we are doing very well across industries.”

Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2

With new and enhanced features optimised to secure the new digital experience, Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2 enables organisations to securely embrace cloud, mobile and social infrastructures and reach new user communities to help further expand and develop their businesses. Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2 also continues to deliver the industry’s only complete, open and integrated identity management solution with enhanced features that enable customers to efficiently comply with the latest regulatory requirements, secure critical applications and sensitive data and streamline password management for high risk accounts, in addition to still lowering operational costs.

A key component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2 is built on Oracle’s platform, open standards approach to respect customer choice so organisations can leverage these technologies out-of-the-box with Oracle fusion middleware, as well as non-Oracle applications and middleware.

“We designed Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2 to meet the new challenges our customers face from the today’s digital experience to help them better secure their existing infrastructure and continue to expand their reach,” said, Oracle Vice President of Development, Security and Identity Management Amit Jasuja. “With Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2, organisations can strengthen and simplify identity lifecycle management across the entire enterprise, while still meeting complex compliance and regulatory requirements.”

Oracle Privileged Account Manager

The Oracle Privileged Account Manager was launched to help customers efficiently comply with regulatory requirements, secure critical applications and sensitive data, and lower operational costs.

The latest addition to Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2, a key component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, Oracle Privileged Account Manager provides customers with the ability to easily and safely manage passwords for shared or administrative accounts associated with business applications, middleware, databases and operating systems. Typically an enterprise data centre can have hundreds of shared accounts, bringing an additional level of security concerns as shared accounts provide elevated system access often to highly sensitive information and can be accessed by multiple sources with little way to audit their usage back to any individual.  By combining advanced policy-based and automated password management capabilities with comprehensive auditing and reporting features, Oracle Privileged Account Manager delivers highly-secure and simplified password administration to shared accounts, while further streamlining identity compliance reporting.    As a part of Oracle Identity Governance and integrated into Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2, Oracle Privileged Account Manager can also significantly reduce identity management costs, deployment times and audit deficiencies.  

 “With increasing complexity and the need for tight policy controls, managing passwords for shared and administrative accounts can be a very time consuming and expensive process,” stated Jasuja. “Oracle Privileged Account Manager reduces the administrative burden while enabling customers to benefit from simplified, highly-secure management of shared and administrative accounts. The combination can significantly reduce identity costs and improve security by protecting sensitive data from unauthorised parties.”