eTrust Directory Provides Secure Backbone for Identity Management

The ANZ Banking Group Limited (ANZ) is one of Australia’s leading banking and financial services groups. Headquartered in Melbourne, where it first opened an office as the Bank of Australia in the 1830s, and with total assets of AUD$183 billion (approximately US$120 billion), ANZ is among the top 100 banking organizations in the world.

Equipping Customers to Fully Leverage Internet Commerce

Identrus provides a trusted standard for identity and authorization that is used by leading financial institutions throughout the world. ANZ was one of the founding investors in Identrus.

Digital certificates are an integral element of identity management for online business. Digital certificates confirm that you are who you say you claim to be, and they act as electronic “passports” that establish your credentials when performing transactions on the Web. Like passports, they are valid for a fixed period of time. As a certification authority, one can identify the person (or corporation) doing business online, and validate or revoke privileges as needed.

“Customers require the highest level of trust, security, reliability and customer service from a bank,” said Joseph Failla, Executive Manager of Institutional Financial Services, Corporate Banking Portal, ANZ. “As more business and financial transactions move online, customers are requiring streamlined transaction systems that provide immediate authentication, integrity and confidentiality.

“In the case of business customers, banks must also provide a simple, non-repudiated authentication service that they can use to improve their own business processes. By providing a digital certificate service, ANZ customers can electronically sign and encrypt electronic business communications, ensuring transactions are reliable and enforceable. This will equip our customers to take full advantage of Internet channels,” said Failla.

 

	During proof-of-concept testing, the flexibility and performance of eTrust Directory were well ahead of any other offering. And for availability, reliability and scalability, eTrust Directory outweighed all its competitors.
		Joseph Failla, Executive Manager of Institutional Financial Services ANZ Banking Group Limited

 

Optimizing the Customer’s Online Experience

ANZ’s objective with its identity management framework and corporate banking portal is to create a unified identity solution that would provide a single sign-on (SSO) experience for all its customers, business partners and staff to log on or enter specific services.

When a user logs on using SSO technology, an SSO agent presents his/her authentication credentials seamlessly in the background to the different systems and applications being accessed. This allows customers and staff using the ANZ portal to access all the information and applications they are authorized to, even though they may be held in more than a dozen disparate systems.

“ANZ’s customers are looking for a secure, reliable and frustration-free online banking experience,” said Failla. “ANZ’s goal in providing a centralized repository for administration of our users will allow us to take better advantage of the Web. The aim is to have our customers get the information they’re entitled to access across all of ANZ’s business groups and product lines.”

eTrust Directory, the Backbone of ANZ’s Identity Management Framework

ANZ’s identity management framework requires a robust directory to facilitate high-speed lookup, authentication and authorization of its numerous accounts. Directories provide quick access to critical information and ANZ chose eTrust Directory from Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) as this key component.

eTrust Directory is considered the backbone of ANZ’s identity management framework. It can provide ANZ with one true enterprise directory that encompasses all of its user accounts— including all customers and staff on the one directory system. Thorough evaluation of comparative products clearly showed eTrust Directory as the only product that could meet the requirements of full replication and failover at the hardware level.

During proof-of-concept testing, the flexibility and performance of eTrust Directory were well ahead of any other offering,” explained Failla. “And for availability, reliability and scalability, eTrust Directory outweighed all its competitors. Importantly, eTrust Directory is also vendor-agnostic and offers easy integration. ANZ, like many organizations, uses many Microsoft applications such as Outlook and Office. The easy integration of eTrust to Microsoft’s Active Directory was another important deciding factor.”

eTrust OCSPro, ANZ’s Real-Time Validation Engine

The directory component of any identity management framework needs to be tied to a validation engine that can quickly provide the online status of digital certificates. Once a customer knows who they’re dealing with they need to know if that party’s digital certificate is valid or has been suspended or revoked by the issuing body (such as ANZ or another bank).

For ANZ, it is critical that our identity management framework provides real-time validation of digital certificate status to our customers, processes and other relying points,” said Failla. “When our customers are conducting online business it’s important that both the bank and customer know the current status of a digital certificate.”

CA’s eTrust OCSPro gives ANZ a real-time validation capability, again enhancing the user experience and adding business value. eTrust OCSPro also supports user-defined policies, which allows ANZ to configure the responder to enforce preexisting system rules, and meet specific geographic, organizational and legal requirements.” Failla continued, “Our evaluations found eTrust OCSPro to be a very good OCSP responder for our needs in terms of flexibility, scalability and ease of integration with other systems.”

World-Class Identity Management Framework

Failla concluded, “The benefits to ANZ of an Identrus-certified identity management framework with an enterprise-wide directory, real-time validation and digital certificate technology are extensive. CA’s service has been commendable. Their depth of dedication and support structures available to solve complex problems were impressive and highly professional. Above all, they listen to the customer.”