Victorian State Government Drives Citizen and Business Value with Federated Identity Solution from Entrust
Entrust GetAccess™ leverages latest SAML 2.0 Identity Federation technology to enable Victorian government single sign-on security for entrepreneurs and small businesses
21 Feb 2006
DALLAS – Entrust, Inc. [NASDAQ: ENTU], a world leader in securing digital identities and information, today announced that the Victorian Business Master Key (VBMK) in Australia, a Victorian state government project managed by the Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development, will deploy the Entrust GetAccess™ solution to provide federated single sign-on (SSO) for businesses and citizens. The SSO capability will help allow new businesses to leverage the services of multiple government departments in registering their business via a single login event. The solution provides a stable standards-based environment for connecting users to separate, disparate services using a single secure interface, helping to simplify the user experience while maintaining administrator control over disparate access rights.
Currently, VBMK receives 65,000 new business registrations each year. When the new system is deployed, VBMK hopes to drive 50 percent of users to online processes to promote increased efficiency while helping reduce the overhead costs associated with manual processing. The new system will help provide a seamless experience for end-users by reducing the need to login to multiple government accounts in order to access sensitive data such as tax information. Without federated SSO, users would be required to maintain a separate account with the Tax Office and potentially numerous other accounts with other government agencies and departments.
The implementation was led by a team from NCS, the ICT arm of the Singapore Telecommunications Group, and SingTel Optus. “We wanted to help create a homogeneous portal environment that the Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (DIIRD) could use to efficiently administer and protect all of VBMK’s key applications and services,” said Rob Parcell, director southern region, Optus Business. “New users soon will be able to access multiple applications securely via one single Web access point, provided that they have the appropriate authorization to do so. Entrust’s experience in large-scale global government initiatives was an important factor in our decision to roll out Entrust™ security software for single sign-on requirements for VBMK.”
“With NCS as the system integrator and project manager for this project, we were able to bring to bear a wide ranging set of ICT integration experience for governments, garnered through many and varied public sector projects in the region,” said Chan Kah Choon, general manager of government and healthcare services, NCS Pte Ltd. “NCS is proud to be an integrator for VBMK to help facilitate the foundation for a fully integrated, online relationship and government services management system for Victorian businesses to interact across all government departments.”
Over the past 24 years, NCS has been a close partner to many governments in the region in their quest to achieve a One Government Service Experience to citizens and businesses. They have formed a strategic relationship with Entrust in order to help bring even greater value to e-government initiatives in Australia.
The Entrust GetAccess solution supports conformant interoperable SAML 2.0 identity federation capabilities to provide seamless integration with an organization's Web partners and affiliates to allow Web SSO deployment to more closely mirror the requirements of business partnerships. The Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 specification is an important evolution of Entrust GetAccess’ SAML 1.1 support, as it provides a standard way to define user authentication, authorization and attribute information in federated cross-domain Web and Web Services communications. It provides features such as user initiated online identity federation, privacy of identity and session management across disparate domains. Important to any federated environment, the Entrust GetAccess system also supports the ability to strongly authenticate users for increased confidence in the identity of a user. This includes support for Entrust IdentityGuard, Entrust’s leading risk-based authentication platform that supports a range of highly deployable strong authentication capabilities.
“Entrust is delighted to help VBMK provide a simple and secure portal for it citizens and businesses,” said Kevin Simzer, senior vice president at Entrust. “The Entrust GetAccess solution will provide a strong and scalable platform supporting this innovative e-government initiative, highlighting the key value of federated SSO to extended business partnerships.”
About Victorian Business Master Key
The Victorian State Government in Australia is making it easier for businesses to access government information in a timely and straightforward manner. For small business, particularly new businesses, dealing with government processes and requirements can be confusing and time consuming.
To assist new businesses in their dealings with government agencies, the Victorian State Government has allocated $6 million (AUD) over three years to establish the Victorian Business Master Key (VBMK) initiative.
The VBMK initiative will allow businesses, particularly new start-ups, to manage all dealings with government agencies. The VBMK initiative will be accessible through the Business Victoria website (www.business.vic.gov.au). Single sign-on will be available late February 2006.