IBM has acquired Lighthouse Security Group and plans to use the organization’s identity management technology to help customers manage information stored in the data center and the cloud.
Lighthouse Security Group is a subsidiary of longtime IBM partner Lighthouse Computer Services, an IT services company. Financial details were not disclosed. IBM plans to integrate the Lighthouse and CrossIdeas technology with its own to provide a “full suite of security software and services that protect and manage a user’s identity,” IBM said in a statement.
“The combination of both vendors and existing capabilities gives IBM’s cloud a good start in the cloud identity game, with the 14 million-plus Lighthouse users being a sizeable addition in market share,”
Holger Mueller, analyst for Constellation Research, said in an email to CruxialCIO. IBM will likely make more acquisitions, which will eventually give a better indication of its overall identity and access management strategy for the cloud, Mueller said.
In the latest acquisition, IBM gets Lighthouse Gateway, a cloud-based identity management platform that lets users with mobile devices access data that sits in the cloud, in a data center or a hybrid of both.
“Protecting this data and who has access to it has become a challenge, costing our clients time and money,”
Kris Lovejoy, general manager for IBM Security Services, said in a statement.
Lighthouse Gateway will be integrated with IBM’s managed security services. The platform can be used with IBM’s Security Identity and Access Management technology in providing identity management outside the data center. Gateway features include user provisioning, identity lifecycle governance, single sign-on, enterprise user registry services, federation and user self-service.
IBM is investing heavily in security, Big Data analytics and cloud computing, which the company sees as growth markets. In the last decade, IBM has made more than a dozen acquisitions in security, according to the company. IBM has more than 6,000 researchers and developers in 25 security labs worldwide.
Alex Lim
Alex Lim is a certified IT Technical Support Architect with over 15 years of experience in designing, implementing, and troubleshooting complex IT systems and networks. He has worked for leading IT companies, such as Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco, providing technical support and solutions to clients across various industries and sectors. Alex has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the National University of Singapore and a master’s degree in information security from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also the author of several best-selling books on IT technical support, such as The IT Technical Support Handbook and Troubleshooting IT Systems and Networks. Alex lives in Bandar, Johore, Malaysia with his wife and two chilrdren. You can reach him at [email protected] or follow him on Website | Twitter | Facebook
