IBM upgraded its identity management capabilities with tools to help customers manage user access to sensitive information, the company said Wednesday

Big Blue, which has tried to bolster its presence in network security with a series of acquisitions and new investments, announced version 5.0 of IBM Tivoli Identity Manager.

"New features and enhancements to IBM Tivoli Identity Manager are intended to greatly improve management of business policy compliance, accelerate and simplify set-up and deployment," IBM states in a press release. "With new 'out-of-the-box' instructional wizards, templates and best practices that can speed time for deployments and reduce the learning curve of new users, customers are expected to benefit from an estimated 50% reduction in deployment time compared to previous releases."

IBM called the upgrades the most extensive ever for Tivoli Identity Manager, a software product that manages user accounts, access permissions and passwords for employees, contractors and customers.

Tivoli Identity Manager is designed to aid compliance with industry and government regulations, providing centralized reports on security policy, access rights and audit events. The software also automatically corrects and removes non-compliant access rights, IBM says.

Pricing starts at US$10,000, and goes up depending on the number of users or processors, according to IBM. An InfoWorld test two years ago found the product cost US$120,000 for 2,700 users, making it more expensive than similar products from Microsoft and Novell, but less expensive than products from Sun and Thor Technologies (now owned by Oracle).