Courion Delivers Frictionless User Provisioning With AccountCourier 3.0.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 8, 2003

Self-Service Workflow and Rules Engine Enhancements

Enable Enterprises to Fully Automate User Life Cycle Management

Courion(R) Corporation, a leading provider of self-service identity management solutions, today announced the latest release of its AccountCourier(TM) user provisioning software, targeted at enterprises that need to more securely and efficiently manage the computer accounts and access rights of employees, business partners and customers.

Courion's AccountCourier 3.0 fully automates the security and business procedures needed to set up new users in multi-platform computing environments; modify user accounts in response to transfers, promotions, and status changes; and suspend user access rights when business relationships end. By eliminating the human "friction points" inherent in manual provisioning processes and required by competitive solutions, AccountCourier's unique rules-based provisioning policies and self-service technology reduce the high cost of account management; minimize error and security risk; and increase employee productivity, customer service and overall business responsiveness.

"We are looking to delegate new hire, employee termination and other user provisioning processes to our doctors and management staff in order to reduce costs, improve productivity, control access to key medical systems, and ultimately, enhance our ability to deliver quality patient care," comments Kevin Murray, operating systems manager, Children's Hospital Boston. "We are deploying Courion's AccountCourier because it adapts quickly to our diverse IT environment, provides multiple levels of rules constraints to enforce our information security policies, and has the ease of use required by our hospital staff."

New Features

New features in AccountCourier 3.0 include:

Bulk operations: Enables authorized IT staff and business managers to create, enable, disable, change and delete accounts for many users in one operation. This capability grants immediate system access to large groups of new hires, partners or customers for instant productivity, and disables or modifies the access rights of entire departments for increased security and business responsiveness.

Status Queue: Reports status of all outstanding provisioning jobs in a single, easy-to-use screen, providing instant feedback to non-technical managers and IT administrators on the outcome of each user provisioning action.

Change Action: Modifies the fine-grained attributes of any computer system account (i.e. account expiration, group membership) based on easy-to-use, Web-based policies, which allow enterprises to more efficiently and securely process employee transfers, promotions, moves and ad-hoc access requests.

User Re-Modeling: Enhances Courion's User Modeling(TM) technology with the ability to "re-clone" one or more users based on an existing user or role, in order to add accounts in accordance with security policy without requiring knowledge of each system. This feature extends AccountCourier's self-service delegation capabilities, and results in greater operational efficiency and improved service levels.

Real-time Account Information: Connects to managed systems in real time, providing instant, accurate summaries of user access rights for audit compliance or access change.

XML Interface: Leverages industry standard to drive AccountCourier's rules-based provisioning policies and comprehensive set of agentless and agent-based connecters from external workflows or policy managers, in order to speed deployment and leverage existing investments.

Customizable Provisioning Actions: Automatically sets fine-grained account attributes during any provisioning action in order to customize provisioning activities to meet business and security requirements. This feature enables IT staffs to delegate the ability to disable user accounts to business managers, even for computer systems that don't natively support the disabled status for greater efficiency and security.

Agentless Connectors for Microsoft Exchange 2000 and Novell NDS: Enables companies to immediately create, enable, change, disable and delete Exchange mailboxes, mailbox attributes and NDS accounts and attributes in accordance with security policies.

"In this difficult economic environment, enterprises are placing heavier emphasis on workflow functionality to realize cost savings by reducing the time required to complete a user's access request," says Pete Lindstrom, research director for Spire Security, LLC. "Workflow is best supported with solutions that support multiple levels of rules and constraints to ensure that security policies are enforced at key points during the process."

"With this release, we continue to deliver on our unique vision of frictionless, self-service user provisioning," said Thomas Rose, vice president of marketing, Courion. "Competitive solutions require complex approval cycles to delegate user management to business managers, re-introducing the costs, service delays and error that automated provisioning is supposed to eliminate. With Courion's Adaptive Workflow(TM) and Identity Link(TM) technology, enterprises can create fully-automated policies that combine business logic and security restrictions to determine what IT resources a user can access, finally making the management of user accounts efficient, secure, and cost-effective."

Availability

AccountCourier 3.0 is available immediately through Courion and Courion Authorized Solution Providers.

About Courion

Courion Corporation is the leading provider of self-service identity management solutions that help enterprises manage the access rights and credentials of employees, business partners, and customers with more speed, more security, and less cost. Courion's Identity Management Suite, anchored by its AccountCourier(TM) user provisioning and PasswordCourier(R) password management product lines, secures and streamlines the resolution of common business problems such as new user account setup and password reset. Courion's rules-based technology automates manual identity management processes by aligning information security policies with business operations and by connecting to existing IT infrastructure for fast deployment and rapid ROI.

Courion's customers include industry leaders such as The Boeing Company, Cummins, Inc., Dell Computer, GE, Raymond James Financial Services, SunTrust Banks, Target Corporation, government institutions such as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Census Bureau, and large not-for-profit organizations such as Kaiser Permanente. Courion is funded by QuestMark Partners, JMI Equity, and other private investors. For more information, contact Courion's headquarters in Framingham, MA, USA at [phone] or visit www.courion.com.

Courion is a registered trademark and AccountCourier is a trademark of Courion Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.