Volkswagen Group is implementing a global identity management system to tighten security, protect business-critical information and lock down policies to demonstrate compliance.

The car manufacturer is using BMC Software’s identity management suite to centralise identity management and provide policy-based access to information for staff, dealers and importers.

The Access and Identity Management (Aim) programme will involve more than 500,000 identities and thousands of applications in some 150 countries.

The group, whose brands include Audi and Bentley, is replacing its outmoded DB2-based identity management application with the BMC system, which offers end-to-end identity management, workflow, directory management, audit, password management and single sign-on.

‘The old system was batch-oriented and needed to run updates every night,’ said Ottmar Beckmann, chief information security officer for Volkswagen Group.

‘Because our installation is so huge, we decided to buy an identity management system based on proven technology, not one going through two major releases over the next few years.’

Volkswagen brands and subsidiaries have traditionally operated their own technology infrastructures, but the company wanted to improve efficiency by standardising technology to cope with the geographical complexity of the firm and its growing portfolio of brands.

The first phase of the project involved migrating the DB2-based programme to the BMC identity management system. Phase two concentrated on consolidating data from the human resources system scattered across some 250 operating entities.

The group is consolidating multiple directory data and eliminating discrepancy.

‘With so many user identities, it is essential to know who is in the company,’ said Beckmann. ‘We also have lots of external people working in the system, so from a security issue, all identities should be linked to individual users.’

The next phase is to provide multilingual self-registration for all suppliers. ‘We have more than 800,000 users on our IT systems, and expect close to one million by the middle of 2007,’ said Beckmann.

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