Fatou Coulibaly - "Identity Solution"

“Identity Solution.” Anita Hawser. Global Finance. New York: Sept. 2007. Vol. 21, Iss. 8, pg. S8, 2 pgs.
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This article is about the imminent necessity to use a cash management security system to ensure and reinforce the security of online transactions in a company. It is because these sorts of operations increased a lot in the past and are still amplifying that companies need to make sure measures are taken to identify people who make payments within these firms. It is the US pharmaceutical company Merck which first introduced the concept of updating the firm’s security of procedures that related to payments effectuated by Merck’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Due to the fact that any account needs to have all the information about an individual who processed a transaction to be resubmitted in case of a doubt, “there is no central repository to quickly revoke signatory rights if needed.” Thus, every bank has its own complicated or long processes and forms to fill out when such things occur.

It is in this perspective that the CEO of IdenTrust (“a global network of banks including but not limited to Citi, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank, that issues digital certificates certifying someone’s identity”) noticed that some companies were not aware of the number of bank accounts they possess, and that “25% of case account signatories are wrong.” Therefore it is crucial for such companies to adopt techniques which will enhance their security. For instance, instead of signing payment files at a company identification level, it will now be essential to perform that signing procedure at the individual stage. This means that in general, rather than just knowing that payments were done by employees within the company, now it is going to be more specific because the exact person who effectuated the corporate payment transfer will be identified.

I believe the implementation of this identity management initiative is very good because security will be ensured at its highest level. Employees won’t exchange each other’s passwords and information in order to process payments. Companies will know who is who, and who did what. IdenTrust will help firms to know and “certify that people are who they say they are.” The specific procedure consists of using the certificates in this way: “the certificates bind an identity to a pair of electronic keys, otherwise known as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), which uses a public and private key to encrypt and sign digital information. PKI-encrypted digital certificates are considered to be one of the strongest means of authenticating someone's identity.”

I strongly approve of the use of IdenTrust’s digital identification signature credentials, not only for firms that have encountered serious security problems, but by all companies because online transactions and payment transfers don’t simply need to be performed with passwords and pin. The identification of the individuals will lead banks and many other companies to authorize their employees to take these important actions related to great amounts of money. I think this ID management solution should be furthermore developed and spread around the world, especially in countries where corruption and fraud are very recurrent. I found that this article was very interesting in terms of the specific processes it describes concerning security issues.