On the occasion of the European Identity Conference 2009 (EIC), the leading European event for Identity and Access Management (IAM) and GRC (Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance), the analyst firm Kuppinger Cole conferred the European Identity Award. The award recognizes outstanding projects as well as innovations and additional developments of standards.
There are six categories for the award. In addition to best innovation in the areas of IAM and GRC, and the best new or improved standards, the best projects of the past 12 months for the categories internal projects, B2B, B2C, and eGovernment are honoured.
Manufacturers, system integrators, consultants, and user enterprises were encouraged to propose candidates for the award. Kuppinger Cole also included projects they had encountered during their own analyses activities. Up to three outstanding projects and innovations were selected as recipients of the awards from the group of proposed candidates.
In the category "Best innovation", the award went to the OpenSSO initative, founded and supported by Sun Microsystems. Their project, OpenSSO Fedlet has provided a lean solution for the Identity Federation. Another award goes to the companies Yubico and AXSionics for their respective innovations in the area of strong authentication, which provide easier solutions for use on the internet and in the context of user-centric identity management. Another award in that category went to Microsoft for their Geneva project, in which federation becomes part of user containers - in the view of Kuppinger Cole, one of the most significant enhancements for future use and dissemination of the Identity Federation.
The European Identity Award for the category "Best new or improved standard" went to the Aristotle Project for ArisID, an important enhancement of IGF (Identity Governance Frameworks) and CARML, which enhances user-friendliness of these important standards for IAM and GRC. This particular innovation had been promoted and supported by Oracle. The standardization initiative OAuth (Open Authentication) receives an award for their streamlined approach for authentication standardization, which finds a lot of market interest. The last award in this category goes to the Information Card Foundation (ICF) for standardizing the important approach of Information Cards for future identity management.
One of the awards in the category "Best internal IAM/GRC project" went to Enel SpA, the largest energy supplier in Italy, for their nationally implemented large-scale project with full IAM and GRC integration, in which sophisticated SoD controls are used, and for which role management was widely implemented. Another award goes to Deutsche Bank AG for their GRC implementation in the financial sector, which provided fast implementation of control functions for user authorizations. And last but not least, one award goes to ECCO Sko A/S, a Danish shoe manufacturer, and Helvetia Insurance in Switzerland. These companies provided solutions for IAM and GRC implementations for the integration into other systems, e.g. Lifecycle Management and License Management (ECCO) and their respective procurement workflows (Helvetia).
One of the awards for "Best IAM/GRC project for B2B" went to Citi for their Global Transaction Service, which supports secure transactions for their B2B customers. The next award went to the Swedish BankID Consortium for their successful solution in the area of electronic ID, which can be utilized by their employees, partners, and clients, and has already been well established. The last award in this category goes to swissgrid ag, which recognized their approach for identity management in the electricity sector, where challenges are growing continuously more complex due to deregulation, and solutions need to be realized far beyond the boundaries of individual enterprises.
One of the European Identity Awards in the category "Best IAM/GRC project for B2C" goes to the Department of the Interior of the Czech Republic for their project CzechPoint, a kiosk-based approach, with which citizens can utilize eGovernment functions, and which significantly simplifies processes for both citizens and the state. Another award goes to the London Borough of Newham for their first implementation of Information Cards in eGovernment, which simplifies access to their services for citizens (clients).
One further award in the category "Best IAM/GRC project for eGovernment" went to the city of Cologne; their project successfully transformed their internal IAM solution with a strong service management component into a common service center, which can also be utilized by other communities in the region.