Sun joins hand with PricewaterhouseCoopers to offer Role Based Access Control Solution

Sun Microsystems announced their latest partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to provide a new advanced access control solution to help business organisations in Thailand enhance access management process while reducing complexity and cost of security administration.

Information technology has enabled businesses to improve their employees' productivity, integrate their supply chains, and automate and improve their interactions with customers. As organisations increase the functionalities and information offered on either internal or external networks, controlling access to information and other resources becomes more complex and costly. In addition, access security failures can disrupt an organisation's operations and can have financial, legal, and personal confidence impacts.

Unsurprisingly, the usage of Role Based Access Control (RBAC) is now becoming a critical control point to address some of the most challenging aspects of operating businesses today. An automated RBAC solution is the next evolutionary step in access control technology. Deployment can eliminate the complexity of security administration and user-profile management by allowing system administrators to easier manage access based on roles, automate all related access processes, and reduce the risk of errors associated with manual processes. With its simplicity, businesses can also save cost of security administration.

Role Based Access Control is a part of Sun Role Manager, a key component of Sun's complete identity management (IdM) portfolio, which offers businesses a comprehensive strategy for identity-based security and compliance. Sun's IdM portfolio includes products for user provisioning and identity auditing, access management, and directory services.

The first IdM joint solution by Sun and PwC has launched two years ago. Sun and PricewaterhouseCoopers worked together to offer an identity management solution. The joint solution was designed to help businesses achieve sustainable regulatory compliance, improve security and increase process efficiencies.

Thanachart Numnonda, Software Business director at Sun Microsystems (Thailand) said that in the latest alliance, the two companies had combined each other's strength to offer the evolutionary access control solution to help business companies in Thailand improve their security and leverage role lifecycle management and identity compliance capabilities.

The new solution is designed to simplify and automate access-related processes, allowing system administrators to effectively manage access by creating roles according to the job functions, granting permissions to those roles, and then assigning users to the roles on the basis of their job responsibilities.

With this technology, Thanachart said, businesses will be able to achieve access control compliance more efficiently while gaining financial savings on the cost of administration when compared to the previous process, which saw access management  based on an individual and user-by-user basis.

Vilaiporn Taweelappontong, Partner in the PricewaterhouseCoopers Mekong, which comprises Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam who heads the Information Technology Services unit, said a Role Based Access Control solution is a significant step forward for businesses to bridge the gap between IT infrastructure, access privileges, and business organisation. Effective deployments should target reducing the complexity of security administration, streamlining operations, enhancing compliance, and importantly, minimizing costs to the organisation.

Through this alliance, she said, companies can leverage PwC's technology expertise with Sun's access control technology to deliver a new solution. This alliance demonstrates the commitment of the two companies to help businesses pass through this economic crisis by delivering them the latest technology to improve process efficiencies at dramatically lower costs.

Under the plan, Sun and PwC will deliver the solutions focusing on security concerns of companies in major segments: finance and banking, public utilities, and telecommunication.

"These areas are the top priority sectors to adopt technology to automate their internal security controls to meet worldwide standards and regulations" Vilaiporn said.

Customers can start the implementation of an RBAC solution according to their business drivers and budget. The solution will be provided into two types: RBAC with identity management (IdM) and RBAC without IdM.

To get a better understanding of RBAC and IdM technology, businesses in Thailand will have a chance to explore the benefits of the technology in a one-day seminar organised by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Sun Microsystems. The seminar will be held on February 19, 2009 from 1:00 pm to 4:30 pm at PricewaterhouseCoopers on the 15th Floor of Bangkok City Tower, Sathorn.