Survey Reveals Organizations at Risk from Security Violations
Survey Reveals More Than Half of Organizations at Risk from Security and Compliance Violations
Calgary, Alberta, Canada - February 6, 2008 -M-Tech Information Technology, Inc., a leading provider of identity management solutions today announced survey results revealing that most organizations continue to manage privileged passwords manually, putting them at risk of security breaches and in violation of regulatory requirements.
More than 90 IT professionals from medium to large scale enterprises participated in the November 2007 survey, which included questions about infrastructure, business processes and technology used to manage privileged passwords.
The survey revealed that 61% of organizations continue to use manual processes to change privileged passwords despite the high cost of doing so, and despite the fact that passwords which are changed manually are typically not changed for long periods of time.
Half of the respondents noted that IT audits had raised security concerns regarding the management of privileged passwords and 30% of those surveyed thought that ex-employees continued to have access to sensitive passwords.
"Increased information technology (IT) auditor sophistication and the increased organizational emphasis on compliance have raised concerns about privileged accounts to the highest levels of the organization," noted Mark Diodati, Senior Analyst for Burton Group's Identity and Privacy Strategies.
"Many organizations don't have a good process to manage this problem, not because they don't understand the need, but because a robust solution is technically challenging," said Idan Shoham, M-Tech CTO. "M-Tech addresses this need with ID-Archive, a secure and scalable solution that enables organizations to replace static privileged passwords with passwords that change daily."
ID-Archive, a component of the Hitachi ID Management Suite, is network security software designed specifically to address the problem of insecure, static and well-known administrator passwords. This solution secures privileged passwords by changing each one to a new long, random string daily, thereby eliminating password retention by former employees. With ID-Archive, IT staff must sign into a web page to request access to passwords - creating personal authentication, authorization and an audit trail...in short: IT accountability.
About M-Tech
Hitachi ID Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of identity management solutions. The Hitachi ID Management Suite has been licensed by hundreds of mid- to large-sized organizations worldwide. Hitachi ID's solutions enable organizations to effectively manage every aspect of the user lifecycle. The Hitachi ID Management Suite includes ID-Synch for user provisioning, ID-Certify for privilege audit and cleanup, P-Synch for password management, ID-Archive to securely manage privileged passwords and ID-Access for group management.
For more information on Hitachi ID Systems, Inc. and its products, please visit the corporate web site at Hitachi-ID.com, the product web sites at ID-Synch.com, P-Synch.com, ID-Certify.com, ID-Archive.com, ID-Access.org, or call 1.403.233.0740.
M-Tech Contact
Dawn Mallyon
Marketing Manager
Hitachi ID Systems, Inc.
500, 1401 1st Street S.E
Calgary, AB T2G 2J3
1.403.233.0740 ext. 324
dawn_mallyon@Hitachi-ID.com