A leading provider of integrated security and identity management systems and a business unit of Identive Group, Inc. today announced that its Velocity(TM) Access Control and Security Management software has been tested and verified to be compliant with the IF-MAP computing standard by the international industry standards organization, Trusted Computing Group. IF-MAP is a standard computing protocol that supports dynamic data interchange among a wide variety of IT networking components. By becoming IF-MAP compliant, Hirsch Identive’s systems can now allow organizations to implement more effective, integrated security systems alongside their IT networks.

“IF-MAP enables a tight level of integration between physical and network access control that solves many security issues,” says John Piccininni, Vice President of Business Development for Hirsch Identive. “The initial use case for IF-MAP integration with Velocity is the convergence of physical and network access control policies and permissions. For example, information about an employee’s location can be dynamically communicated from Hirsch’s physical access control system to the IT network via IF-MAP, and then access to network resources can be granted or denied based on a person’s presence in a given area or building. This minimizes the tendency of employees to tailgate behind their co-workers through access controlled doors, while ensuring that anyone logging onto the network is actually in the building.”

Employees must present their credentials to specific readers at doors in the area or network access may be denied or limited. Those requesting VPN network privileges or access to wireless points and even industrial controls can be granted or denied based on their presence. This capability begins to fulfill the long discussed promise of security convergence: enhancing physical and network security and improving operational efficiency and compliance, while at the same time containing organizational risk and cost.

The Trusted Computing Group’s IF-MAP standard is attracting many security providers, including those of wireless access points, firewalls, SIEM and SCADA systems, all of which can share events and data through published search and subscribe schema defined under the standard.

As a result of Hirsch Identive’s adoption of the IF-MAP standard, Velocity can now publish physical access control and security events to an IF-MAP server just as other IT network devices do. Other compliant devices can subscribe to the information and act upon it accordingly. IF-MAP compliant network devices and systems can then share data without the need to develop costly customized and easily broken point-to-point integration.

As an added benefit, the nature of this application does not require users to change access credentials. Users can still use the same cards, personal identification number and/or biometrics as before. Additionally, users can utilize existing user name and password network access credentials and leverage the existing network infrastructure.

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hirsch-identives-velocitytm-software-verified-compliant-with-trusted-computing-groups-if-map-standard-2012-01-05