What are HP's moves in the identity space?

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There has been a lot of movement on the identity management product front in the past month or so, especially from some really big players. This week we'll take a look at three of the players and their announcements to see what the trends are.

HP made two, if not really big, then certainly "good sized," announcements in the past month or so. In May HP rolled out NIS - the "National Identity System."

<aside> Didn't anyone at HP remember that NIS also stands for "Network Information Service," the newer name for Sun's "yellow pages" service which is still used on Solaris and in Linux? Or were all the other acronyms taken? </aside>

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There has been a lot of movement on the identity management product front in the past month or so, especially from some really big players. This week we'll take a look at three of the players and their announcements to see what the trends are.

HP made two, if not really big, then certainly "good sized," announcements in the past month or so. In May HP rolled out NIS - the "National Identity System."

<aside> Didn't anyone at HP remember that NIS also stands for "Network Information Service," the newer name for Sun's "yellow pages" service which is still used on Solaris and in Linux? Or were all the other acronyms taken? </aside>

HP's NIS is intended for government use. It will, according to HP, "enable modern national identification systems to allow citizens to access e-government services and conduct secure transactions." For example, the system is designed to fully support the use of the soon-to-be-required biometric passports as well as all aspects of the US-VISIT (U.S. Visitor and Immigration Status Indication Technology) program of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Built in conjunction with Microsoft, and relying on Microsoft operating systems, platforms and services, NIS appeals to large government installations by supporting:
* Online and offline enrollment of demographic and biometric data through live capture.
* Local request as well as regional/central verification and registration.
* Multi-tier architecture.
* Secure management of the document lifecycle.
* Biometric and personalization subsystem integration.
* Online and offline identity verification.
* Fault tolerance and disaster recovery through design.

While HP seems to be ahead of the pack in supporting identity management in a national security environment, its other release definitely smacks of playing catch-up. It was just last week that the company announced the release of the HP Compliance Suite for Financial Institutions. Most other vendors' compliance tools were released 9 to 12 months ago.

Still, this is a highly targeted release, unlike most other all-purpose compliance suites. This one is specifically designed to interoperate with HP's other financial services tools (such as HP Open Bank and HP Open Payments) and implements compliance with those regulations covering that industry. For example, the suite doesn't need to know about the Food and Drug Administration's Title 21 Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR Part 11) since the financial sector isn't involved with producing food or drugs.

If you're in the financial services industry, or have clients that are, you should explore HP's integrated products (http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/75794-0-0-0-121.html) including the new compliance suite.

That's just one company's announcements, though, come back next time to learn what Sun's Sara Gates and BMC's Somesh Singh have been up to. (And no, that's NOT what I mean!)

Read more about security in Network World's Security section.

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.