Computer Associates Announces SAML 2.0 Support
Wednesday 31 August 2005Security tool adds SAML support to help reduce cost and risk of connecting distributed business applications and users across Web domains.
Computer Associates announced the availability of SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) 2.0 support in eTrust SiteMinder, its Web access management solution, enabling organizations to provide their users with seamless access to Web applications both within and across corporate boundaries.
eTrust SiteMinder provides federation capabilities that enable customers to federate as an Identity Provider or Service Provider with multiple partners. SAML facilitates identity federation by providing a standardized way to exchange user authentication, entitlement and attribute information across internal and external sites, regardless of the type of security infrastructure in place.
CA's federation platform — including eTrust SiteMinder and eTrust TransactionMinder — is part of a broader eTrust Identity and Access Management (IAM) strategy. CA says it now has more than 100 customers currently leveraging its federation platform to enable hundreds of federated partnerships. Through identity federation, organizations can share identity information with partners in a secure, controlled and automated manner — enabling users to navigate Web applications deployed across internal and external organizations without having to re-authenticate at each site.
CA's federation platform provides the configuration, deployment, and monitoring services essential for ensuring the scalability of federation deployments. These federation capabilities are complemented by authentication, authorization, and audit services — enabling organizations to meet their security management requirements.
End users can securely enable federation using Web browsers or Web services, CA says. They can also incorporate federation mechanisms into their overall IAM implementation to enforce a common set of security policies across the enterprise. eTrust SiteMinder also provides a lightweight SAML Affiliate Agent that quickly and easily extends identity federation to partner organizations that are not otherwise federation-enabled.
“Identity federation is playing an increasingly important role in how organizations enable business units, business partners, and outsourced service providers to securely and seamlessly work together,” said Bill Bartow, senior vice president of eTrust Identity and Access Management at CA.
Developed by the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee, SAML is an XML-based framework for communicating user authentication, entitlement and attribute information to internal or partner organizations.
For more information, visit ca.com .