Start-up Securent makes its debut this week with enterprise middleware for policy-based user authorization and enforcement, an area of provisioning known as entitlement management.

Securent’s Entitlement Management software gives IT managers a way to centrally define the applications to which a user may be given authorization, and integrate these controls into an already-deployed identity-management environment. According to analysts, Securent’s software fills a need overlooked by much of industry, though CA, BEA and Oracle are also zeroing in on this identity-management segment.

Jonathan Penn, principal analyst for identity and security at Forrester Research, said Securent “is addressing a neglected part of identity management: authorization. And more specifically, fine-grained authorization -- not just the authorization based on the user and the URL address they’re going to that the Web single-logon vendors have, but very sophisticated policies for who could do what on which resource based on a range of data that could be both dynamically determined and application specific.

“It’s a big gap in centralized management and a difficult nut to crack,” Penn added, noting that Securent and CA with its IAM Toolkit product seem the most ambitious vendors in taking it on.