Courion Provides Broadest Spectrum of Capabilities to Maximize Security Policy Automation and Business Value Delivered; Company Releases Identity Management Suite 6.5.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 6, 2003

With its continued focus on delivering the most comprehensive identity management solutions available, Courion(R) Corporation today announced Identity Management Suite(TM) 6.5, offering the broadest spectrum of user support, facilitating multi-dimensional views of security administration, help desk and end user staff, while maximizing security policy automation and business value delivered.

"Identity management touches everyone, from customers and security administrators to line of business managers and help desk staff," said Chris King, analyst and program director, Technology Research Services, META Group. "Organizations should consider the varying needs of all these user groups when investing in identity management projects."

The Courion Identity Management Suite is a mature product built on a solid, customer-proven technology foundation. Anchored by AccountCourier(R) for automated user provisioning and PasswordCourier(R) for automated password management, Courion's Identity Management Suite has produced tremendous results for a wide range of customers, including 42 of the Fortune 500.

"With Courion's solutions we reduced the new hire account setup process from two weeks to two hours and eliminated over 1,700 calls to our help desk each month," said Scott Ogawa, chief technology officer, Children's Hospital Boston, a world-renowned teaching hospital with over 7,000 users. "Further, the solutions enable security and HIPAA compliance. With our focus on delivering the best quality patient care while reducing costs to then reinvest in patient care, Courion's identity management solutions help improve privacy and protection of patient information and facilitate access to IT resources for our employees."

The Courion Identity Management Suite 6.5 increases data security and user productivity while reducing costs with:

-- Full spectrum of delegation - AccountCourier end users can

delegate their provisioning rights as determined by the

security policy set forth by the security administration. For

example, the president of a company may wish to delegate his

provisioning rights to his executive assistant on a permanent

basis or an employee may need to delegate privileges to his

manager while he is on vacation for a set period of time.

-- Full range of requester/approver options - AccountCourier

includes advanced security-regulated requester/approver

functionality as well as expanded automation of approvals

including multi-step serial/parallel, bulk and policy-driven

approvals.

-- Unsurpassed performance levels - The latest version of

PasswordCourier boasts six times the performance in

simultaneous password reset sessions and a 35% increase in the

speed of each transaction. With such performance enhancements,

PasswordCourier requires fewer servers to accommodate greater

numbers of simultaneous password reset requests, thereby

reducing the total cost of ownership of the solution even as

the user population expands to include customers, partners,

suppliers and other user communities.

-- Comprehensive real-time reporting - AccountCourier provides

customized reports for different types of end users--business

user, help desk, security administrator--because each requires

a different view of the data. For example, a security

administrator may wish to view abandoned accounts by platform

or all users and associated resources, while the business user

may want to see all accounts provisioned by a particular

manager. Courion's AuditLink(TM) technology also automatically

generates notifications via email or pager and saves detailed

auditing logs in a database of the customer's choice.

-- Bi-directional integration with leading help desk applications

- Courion's ServiceLink(TM) technology provides a

bi-directional connection between Courion's Identity

Management Suite and the industry's most common help desk

applications including Remedy Action Request System,

PeopleSoft CRM and HelpDesk, Peregrine ServiceCenter and

Amdocs ClarifyCRM. This allows for real-time display of help

desk fields, automatic application of data constraints and

automated service requests for non-IT assets.

-- Connection to existing identity stores - Courion's Identity

Management Suite maximizes existing IT resources with its

IdentityLink(TM) technology, which provides a connection to

the industry's most common HR databases, directories and

databases to act as authoritative resources for authenticating

users. With IdentityLink, customers can drive policies, rules

and roles from existing data where it resides, federate 

account data sources by accessing information in real time,

auto-discover account data to rationalize user information and

build a meta-directory while provisioning, all without

requiring data migration, data synchronization or a new

proprietary repository.

-- Advanced usability - Usability and multiple access options are

key to maximizing end user adoption. For this reason,

Courion's Identity Management Suite offers multiple access

options including phone, voice authentication, Web, desktop

and self-service portals. And, customers laud the solutions'

ease-of-use with its user relevant language and visual cues on

each page to highlight where they are in the process they are

working through.

-- Wide range of out-of-the-box platform and application support

- Courion's Identity Management Suite provides out-of-the-box

support for the most commonly used platforms and applications

via both agentless and agent-based technologies. Included in

this release are new platform/application integration modules

for provisioning user accounts on OS/400, Oracle8i, Oracle9i

and OpenVMS. For platforms or applications not currently

supported out-of-the-box, Courion continues to provide a Rapid

Development Kit (RDK) and a Software Development Kit (SDK)

that enable support for any application.

"In large enterprises, so many different departments are involved in managing digital identities, and each comes to the process from a different perspective," said Chris Zannetos, president and CEO, Courion. "Even if a solution performs as promised, it has to appeal to different types of end users with the proper functionality and ease-of-use. With this in mind, Courion continues to expand our proven technology platform with functionality that appeals to all types of users, from the security administrator to the help desk staff to the business manager, so they can extract the information they require and perform the functions they need to with regard to managing digital identities."

Pricing and Availability

Courion Identity Management Suite includes AccountCourier, PasswordCourier, ProfileCourier(R) and CertificateCourier(R). Pricing ranges from $20-$50 per user based on the customer configuration (applications and options selected).

About Courion

Courion Corporation is a 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 user provisioning and PasswordCourier password management product lines, securely automates the resolution of common operational challenges such as user account setup and deletion and password reset and synchronization. Courion's non-invasive, self-service architecture enforces security policies, while providing measurable cost-savings, operational efficiencies and productivity improvements.

Courion's customers include industry leaders such as American Electric Power, The Boeing Company, Children's Hospital Boston, Fannie Mae, GE, Office Depot, SunTrust Banks, 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 508-879-8400 or visit www.courion.com.

Courion, AccountCourier, PasswordCourier, ProfileCourier and CertificateCourier are registered trademarks of Courion Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.