New Managed Service Gives Businesses a Secure, Efficient Solution to Manage
User Access Rights Beyond the Enterprise to Extranets and ASP-hosted Services
RSA(R) CONFERENCE, SAN FRANCISCO, April 10 /PRNewswire/ -- VeriSign, Inc.
(Nasdaq: VRSN), the leading provider of Internet trust services, and
Access360, a leading provider of policy based provisioning software for
enterprise user administration, today announced a strategic partnership that
leverages VeriSign's trusted infrastructure to create the first outsourced
user provisioning solution for enterprises. The companies will deliver a new
co-branded service, Access360.net, powered by VeriSign, which will enable
organizations to efficiently conduct business to the extended enterprise by
securely managing user access rights for both internal and external users.
The Access360.net service integrates Access360's award winning enRole(TM)
user provisioning software with VeriSign's highly-scalable trust
infrastructure to create a trusted managed service, enabling businesses to
automate the increasingly complex process of connecting employees, business
partners and customers to the information and specific resources they need.
Based on a user's role and associated policies, the Access360.net service acts
as a centralized control point to automatically create or make changes to
accounts on currently over 60 different computing systems and applications,
reducing the time it takes to provision users from days to minutes.
Provisioning of applications and services such as credit cards and cell phones
will also be added to the service over time.
"As organizations start to look at the issues of managing access rights
for external users, such as business partners, to their internal resources,
they don't want to dedicate interfaces for every user because it won't scale
and there are significant concerns about privacy of information outside the
firewall," said Yuri Pikover, chief executive officer of Access360.
"With this solution, companies never have to give private user information
to an outside service or business partner, but can establish one connection to
the Access360.net service, powered by VeriSign as a trusted third party," said
Stratton Sclavos, chief executive officer of VeriSign. "With VeriSign acting
as a switch between all the participating organizations, companies can manage
user provisioning while securely controlling their information assets."
According to Gartner research director Roberta Witty, "One of the biggest
problems facing enterprises today is managing access to not only internal
users, but increasingly to large numbers of external entities, including
customers, trading partners, and suppliers. As a result, it's essential that
enterprises' user access policies and procedures can be implemented across
borders in a highly secure and efficient way."
The Access360.net service lays the cornerstone for a Public Provisioning
Infrastructure (PPI) by enabling cross-company provisioning for enterprises
engaged in commerce and collaboration.
Today, organizations must manually provision employees to an increasing
number of external services such as ASPs, information services, commerce hubs,
trading exchanges, credit card issuers, mobile phone services, and long
distance calling card providers. Enterprises also need to give their partners'
employees access to some of their internal systems. The manual processes used
today for this often lag behind when employees change jobs or
responsibilities, exposing companies to increased security risks, which are
closed by the Access360.net service.
Access360.net, powered by VeriSign, provides an outsourced solution that
scales with the size of the business and ensures near real-time updates to a
wide range of systems. A low cost of entry makes this feasible for smaller
enterprises that previously couldn't afford to implement an automated user
provisioning solution.
VeriSign's trusted infrastructure services provide the reliability and
trust for the Access360.net service, allowing organizations to know that the
service will be available 24x7 guaranteed, and that all their confidential
data will be kept secure. Leveraging the over $250 million in infrastructure
investments VeriSign has made, Access360.net customers share the same
reliability and security already enjoyed by customers of VeriSign's other
trusted services, which include PKI, payment, and domain name registration
services used around the world.
In addition to delivering the new service offerings, the companies will
also collaborate on other initiatives, including:
-- Further technical integration of VeriSign technology with the
Access360 product line to provide tightly integrated PKI functionality,
including digital signatures and non-repudiation
-- Joint sales campaigns to the companies' customer bases
-- Distribution of Access360.net to VeriSign and Access360 channel
partners
-- Joint marketing initiatives including event and tradeshow participation
Availability
The companies anticipate that the Access360.net service, powered by
VeriSign, will be available during Q3 as a subscription based co-branded
offering.
About VeriSign
VeriSign, Inc. is the leading provider of trusted infrastructure services
to web sites, enterprises, electronic commerce service providers and
individuals. The company's domain name, digital certificate and payment
services provide the critical web identity, authentication and transaction
infrastructure that online businesses require to conduct secure e-commerce and
communications. VeriSign's services are available through its web sites
(http://www.verisign.com and http://www.netsol.com) or through its direct sales force and
reseller partners around the world.
About Access360
Access360 helps companies better manage Enterprise User Administration by
automating the processes that connect employees, business partners and
customers to the resources they need. The company's flagship product, enRole
puts corporate resources to work faster, provides greater visibility and
control, and reduces the expenses and minimizes the risks associated with
enterprise security. With our policy-based provisioning solutions, companies
are securely conducting business across the extended enterprise while managing
changing environments around the world. Customers such as BP, E*TRADE,
Overseas Union Bank and Sony Electronics have deployed enRole to tighten
enterprise security, increase productivity and reduce operating costs.
Access360 is a privately held company with leading international
investors, including Crosspoint Venture Partners, Amerindo Investment
Advisors, Inc., Pivotal Asset Management, Oracle Corporation and VeriSign,
Inc. Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Access360 has offices throughout the
United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. For more information about
Access360, please call 877-742-6400 or visit the Web site at
http://www.access360.com/ .
Statements in this announcement other than historical data and information
constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the
Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause VeriSign's
actual results to differ materially from those stated or implied by such
forward-looking statements. The potential risks and uncertainties include,
among others, VeriSign's limited operating history under its current business
structure, uncertainty of the market's acceptance of new products and
services, uncertainty of future revenue and profitability and potential
fluctuations in quarterly operating results, increased competition, risks
associated with the company's international business and risks related to
potential security breaches. More information about potential factors that
could affect the company's business and financial results is included in
VeriSign's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, especially in
the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2000.
VeriSign undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking
statements after the date of this press release.
NOTE: VeriSign is a registered trademark of VeriSign, Inc.
VeriSign booth at RSA(R) CONFERENCE: #709
SOURCE VeriSign, Inc.
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CONTACT:
media, Nancy Huddleston, 703-742-4852, or
nancyh@netsol.com, or investors, Katie Ochsner, 650-429-3512, or
kochsner@verisign.com, both of VeriSign, Inc.; or media, Rebecca
Levy, 425-922-9808, or rlevy@access360.com, or investors, Mark
St. Clare, 949-255-3100, or mstclare@access360.com, both of
Access360
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