In virtually every industry, companies are faced with the challenge of making Web resources available to external users in a secure fashion. External users may include a company’s own employees working from offsite locations, employees of partner or customer organizations, and individual end-user customers. This task is an even greater challenge for businesses with a large number of applications that reside on many different platforms and domains particularly when the applications follow autonomous security models. Symphony Identity Management Solutions (IMS) are a set of comprehensive, standards-based Web access and management solutions that help companies solve identity and access management challenges. At the core of Symphony IMS, is the Symphony Web Access Manager (WAM). Symphony Web Access Manager solves the complex needs of companies, their partners and end-users on the web to provide a seamless experience.

• Manage internal and external users, as well as their individual access privileges to resources that reside across heterogeneous IT environments
• Provide users with distinct levels of access within a specific company resource
• Shorten development cycles that were expanded to accommodate implementation of security on an application-by-application basis
• Comply with regulatory requirements for protecting privacy and ensuring the security of company information
• Reduce or eliminate complexities introduced by solutions that implement proprietary and redundant components

Figure down illustrates one way Symphony Web Access Manager can be implemented in an externally facing Web application scenario.