Sun Microsystems Tuesday forged an alliance with Bedford, Mass.-based RSA Security
in an
effort to strengthen its Sun ONE Platform for Network Identity.
Sun has been making an aggressive play for the network identity market, which is expected to be a lucrative playing field as firms
begin tying their operations — and those of their partners, suppliers and customers — together with Web services. Sun’s vision for network identity is a combination of hardware
and software that allows organizations to rapidly establish an open, end-to-end network identity infrastructure.
The alliance with RSA — a joint sales, engineering and marketing agreement — is intended to make Sun’s ONE Directory Server and
ONE Portal Server interoperable with RSA’s ClearTrust Web access management and Keon digital certificate management software.
“Today’s Internet-based business environment requires the ability to protect information assets and secure relationships with
customers, partners, suppliers and employees,” said Shahram Moradpour, senior director of Market Development at Sun. “Working with
companies like RSA Security, we can deliver a comprehensive network identity infrastructure to help enterprises increase security
and user convenience through integrated authentication and access management solutions.”
The companies said ClearTrust is now interoperable with both the Sun ONE Directory Server and Sun ONE Portal Server, and they are
porting it to the Sun ONE Application Server. KEON already supports the Sun ONE Directory Server, Sun ONE Web Server and Sun ONE
Portal Server.
ClearTrust is intended to allow users to centrally manage and enforce Web access privileges. Sun said that by integrating it with
key enterprise applications, ClearTrust translates business rules and security policies into online authorization policies, allowing
users to dynamically protect information assets.
Specifically, the integration of ClearTrust and ONE Directory and Portal Servers is intended to allow customers to:
- Utilize existing user data from across the enterprise, without replication, or retraction
- Centralize access management with existing e-business infrastructure
- Allow both internal departments and external customers and affiliates to manage their own access with delegated
administration.
Keon allows organizations to define and self-administer their own security procedures, trust relationships, certificate formats and
rules for certificate life cycles. The integration of RSA Keon Certificate Authority and RSA Keon Web PassPort with ONE Directory
Server enables automated and centralized credential management.
The Sun ONE Platform for Network Identity is expected to support federated network identity once the Liberty Alliance makes its
specifications available.
