Citation
(2001), "Sign here", Work Study, Vol. 50 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2001.07950dad.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2001, MCB UP Limited
Sign here
Sign here
VeriSign, the provider of Internet trust services, and Netegrity, a supplier of solutions for securely managing e-business, have formed a strategic partnership to deliver a new Entitlements Management Service for enterprises conducting high-value transactions over intranets, extra-nets and customer-facing Web sites. The Entitlements Management Service combines online authentication, digital credentialing and signatures, authorisation and policy management, and dynamic updating of customer and partner information to help businesses realise the process efficiencies, cost savings and increased revenues associated with their Internet initiatives. Highlights include:
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Flexible authentication of employees, customers, buyers, suppliers and distributors via a range of authentication options, including automated checks against internal enterprise data bases, public and proprietary data sources, manual verification of enrolment information, physical business-site inspections and personal presence validation.
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Issue of digital certificates which designate business- and user-specific authentication and generate non-repudiable digital signatures.
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Access management based on enterprise-defined policies and risk parameters.
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Dynamic policy management through real-time retrieval of credit information, payment status, and other relevant business and user information.
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Flexible deployment models supporting policy management either at the customer site or within a hosted environment.
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Granular tracking and auditing with links into back-end legacy systems.
The new service is the first implementation of the recently announced S2ML standard supported by both VeriSign and Netegrity. S2ML enables companies to exchange security information seamlessly, which will enable the rapid integration of trading hubs based on the Entitlements Management Service.
How does it work?
An enterprise wanting to enable business partners in its supply-chain to access its extranet trading environment will now be able to use the Entitlements Management Service through a connection to VeriSign's Authentication Service Bureau. The Authentication Service Bureau provides linkages to key authentication services providers, enabling online authentication of trading partners or consumers against a broad array of data sources. This allows VeriSign to issue digital credentials to previously verified end-users on an organization's behalf. After the authentication procedure is complete, VeriSign issues a digital certificate to an end-user, which binds his or her identity and other attribute information – such as organizational affiliation – into an unforgeable tamper-proof software file. This certificate serves as an electronic ID card, which can then be used for ongoing identification online and is also used to append a legally valid "digital signature" to an electronic transaction or communication.
The Entitlements Management Service next enables enterprises to use Netegrity's SiteMinder platform to accept digital certificates for authentication and subsequent access management of end users based on pre-defined policies. As a user begins the process of initiating an online transaction within the extranet, the Entitlements Management Service executes the enterprise's pre-defined policies and rules to determine the user's eligibility to continue executing the transaction. Finally, to ensure dynamic updating of business and end-user information and privileges, the Entitlements Management Service can retrieve appropriate business information, payment status, and other relevant user information and use the information within the context of the transaction to evaluate policy.