TechJabber.com

Hitachi has acquired M-Tech Systems, Inc. as part of a strategy to broaden its overall security portfolio. The new company will be called Hitachi ID Systems, Inc. (Hitachi ID).

This marks the second acquisition in as many months (in March, IBM bought Encentuate) in an area called Identity and Access Management (IAM), a very “hot” market that Forrester predicts will grow from $2.6 billion in 2006 to more than $12.3 billion in 2014. In addition to IBM, Hitachi will face competition from Sun and others as they enters this new space.

Hitachi believes that M-Tech’s identity management technology will be an integral component of Hitachi’s complete portfolio of information security solutions. Hitachi has a variety of advanced security technologies. Its unique and interesting “finger vein” biometric authentication is already used for ATM authentication in about 80% of Japanese financial institutions that have adopted biometric authentication technologies. Hitachi has several other subsidiaries with deep expertise in security, ranging from RFID technology to hard disk drive encryption to system-level storage to IT consulting and beyond.

While consumer identity theft continues to make huge headlines, the issue often originates from a deeper problem: corporate information theft (whether inadvertent “accidents” or planned and malicious attacks). Identity and access management solutions, when implemented throughout an organization or government institution, can help to prevent both consumer ID theft and corporate information theft.

As background, Hitachi is an $86 billion dollar global entity that employees more than 300,000 people within 74 subsidiaries worldwide. Many think of them as the “GE of Japan” and since Japan is the world’s second largest economy, Hitachi is a company many are watching these days.