HP has announced the availability of the HP National Identity System (NIS) solution on the Microsoft® .NET platform.

The HP NIS solution allows governments to build and quickly deploy at an affordable price a complete, standards-based and technologically agile infrastructure that meets their changing needs for security and identity management.

Going beyond simple secure identification and authentication functionality, the solution enables modern national identification systems to allow citizens to access e-government services and conduct secure transactions. The solution also provides citizens with improved secure and intelligent identity documents.

For example, with heightened security awareness at national borders, the solution fulfils the new requirement to ensure traveller and citizen credentials across an entire country or region.

In addition, the modular nature of the solution enables national and regional governments to more easily plug in additional elements, such as biometrics, to customise and balance the level of security and privacy as defined by a government’s policy and requirements.

Recent figures from industry analyst firm Morgan Keegan show that the worldwide identity management market is approximately

$4.8 billion and is estimated to grow to approximately $10.7 billion in 2007.