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October 17, 2001 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In an effort to allow enterprises to securely scale delivery of electronic services to employees, business partners and customers, Courion Corporation (courion.com) yesterday introduced its new Identity Management Suite, a self-service identity management product family.
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Featuring new versions of PasswordCourier, Courion’s flagship offering for
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self-service password reset and synchronization, and ProfileCourier, the
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company’s self-service directory registration solution, the suite introduces
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two new products – AccountCourier for self-service account provisioning,
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and CertificateCourier for self-service digital certificate registration.
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Together, the four software products manage all the key components of
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digital identity, and mark an important milestone in Courion’s evolving
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strategy to offer a complete self-service infrastructure for managing user
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authentication, authorization, and access.
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According to META Group, users call the help desk an average of 1.75 times
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per month, with 30% of those calls driven by password-related requests. With
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an average cost of $20 per call, an enterprise with 20,000 employees will
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spend over $2.5 million a year on password administration alone. Similar
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hard costs for creating, disabling, and deleting user accounts, updating
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employee and business partner profiles, and registering for digital
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certificates drove Courion to expand its solution suite to include software
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products that help organizations realize rapid ROI in these areas as well.
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Courion says its customers have realized tremendous ROI from implementing
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its self-service password and profile management solutions, and see a clear
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benefit from a suite that will address all identity management needs.
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“Before implementing PasswordCourier, our help desk fielded more than ten
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thousand calls every month from employees requesting password reset,” said
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Chris Price, computing services director, Cummins, Inc. “Now, those users
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can securely reset their own passwords, relieving a huge burden from our IT
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staff. Given its track record, we believe Courion’s self-service account
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provisioning and certificate registration solutions offer significant
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potential savings as well.”
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Courion’s Identity Management Suite empowers employees, business partners
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and customers to reset their own forgotten or expired passwords, create and
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disable user accounts, update personal profiles, and acquire digital
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certificates for corporate PKI – all without requiring information security
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staff to relinquish control. Courion’s unique self-service architecture
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enables IT security and help desk staff to audit requests and exert complete
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control over security policies without the usual administrative burden or
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user support costs. Each of the suite’s software applications can be
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implemented together or separately, and all share a common platform that
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provides the enterprise integration points required for secure self-service.
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The two new products in the suite, AccountCourier and CertificateCourier,
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were developed using the same open architecture as PasswordCourier and
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ProfileCourier, requiring no proprietary database for installation. In
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addition to seamless integration with the most common pieces of
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infrastructure such as LDAP directories or employee databases, the new
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products integrate with the market-leading service management solutions from
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Peregrine Systems and PeopleSoft to allow for more efficient service level
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reporting and security auditing.
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“Today’s global economy requires organizations to open their networks to a
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number of external constituencies, making security an increasingly key
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element of enterprise IT strategy,” said Tom Rose, vice president of
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marketing at Courion. “At the same time, organizations need to ensure that
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users have fast access to revenue-generating applications, while minimizing
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the costs and inefficiencies of user support and administration. Courion’s
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Identity Management Suite, with its unique self-service approach, addresses
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all of these seemingly conflicting requirements by eliminating the need to
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manually provision and manage user profiles, passwords, accounts, and
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digital certificates.”
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PasswordCourier, AccountCourier, ProfileCourier, and CertificateCourier will
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be available independently or together as part of Courion’s Identity
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Management Suite in Nov. 2001. Pricing for the full suite will start at $50
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per licensed employee for enterprise implementations. B2B and B2C pricing,
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volume pricing, and term (subscription) licenses will also be available.
