Hitachi ID Systems
Providing Cost-Effective Access Governance Solutions

Modern enterprises depend on servers, databases, network devices, and software applications to effectively run their businesses. Access to manage each of these systems requires the use of administrative IDs and access rights. Effectively and securely managing a very large number of systems is a challenge for many organizations. Solution providers such as Hitachi ID Systems can address these challenges through automated privileged access management.

“Organizations are challenged to efficiently and securely onboard and deactivate users by managing an ever growing number of passwords, a large number of user security rights and audit records of all these changes. In the education sector, these problems are exacerbated by a large volume of users moving from applicant, to student status, through graduation. Where private corporations may onboard or deactivate one user at a time, a college may have to move tens of thousands at once,” says Idan Shoham, CTO and Co-founder, Hitachi ID System. “Other challenges specific to higher education include the need to manage identities, access rights and credentials for a very large number of alumni and multiple affiliations per user–for example, the same user may be a lecturer in one department, a staff member in another, and a student in a third,” he added. Also, IT departments in higher education must support faculty and staff access to laptops, HR data, etc., grouped by various categories of students, faculty, guest lecturers, alumni, community access and more. Such access must support the heavy use of personal devices (BYOD) within the school and between institutions.

Hitachi ID’s Identity Management Suite is an integrated solution for managing identities and security entitlements across multiple systems and applications. The suite comprises of three core fully-integrated products: Password Manager, Identity Manager and Privileged Access Manager. The suite automates on-boarding, movement and deactivation of users in a secure environment. Identity Manager uses automation, synchronization, self-service, delegated administration and certification to drive user access changes to entitlements on systems and applications.

It improves productivity by simplifying change requests and eliminates long wait times for security changes.

At Hitachi ID, we make every effort to minimize the total cost of ownership of our solutions, by including as many features and integrations as possible

Identity and access management (IAM) projects are typically complex, costly and time consuming. High cost is of particular concern to higher education institutions, which often have limited budgets. “Hitachi ID Suite minimizes the total cost of its solutions by including as many ‘out of the box’ features and integrations as possible and by providing pre-configured solutions to minimize the need for custom development, so that customers can use a working system and adjust it,” stated Shoham. Hitachi ID solutions drive down IT operating expenses (OpEx). For instance, Eastern Illinois University was inundated by a high volume of calls from users who forgot their passwords over the semester break, along with the workload of creating thousands of accounts for new students. After implementing Hitachi ID Password Manager, the university staffs saw a significant reduction in the total number of passwords that users had to remember, resulting in a drastic decline in the number of calls to the help desk. Hitachi ID’s platform provided users with the ability to solve their own password problems without calling the help desk.

With many success stories such as EIU, Hitachi ID is expanding its global market reach. “We continue to invest in product enhancements, both functional and technical and are recruiting to support an ever growing customer base,” concludes Shoham.