Identity Management Success

Success tip of the week: All successful projects align people, policy, process, and technology. Vendor tools and glitzy technology alone cannot solve core business problems, and in many cases, can make a bad situation worse. Carefully consider factors such as business risk aversion, political landscape, and degree of documented business process before starting your project.

To review, the key functions of a full IdM / IAM suite are:

1. Directory Services (LDAP, Meta directories, Virtual Directories, etc.)
2. Provisioning (Getting accounts into and out of systems)
3. Workflow (Business rules and processes)
4. Centralized Access Control Management (RBAC / SSO)
5. Authorization Management (What can accounts do, once authenticated)
6. Auditing and Reporting (What, where, why, when, how)
7. Federation (Passing user and system credentials between partners and “foreign” systems
8. Services Layer (For applications to consume external Identity services)
9. Integration Layer (Templates, connectors, interfaces, API’s)

With requirements gathered, next determine where your project is going. What are the business drivers? What is the minimum requirement(s)? What is the maximum requirement(s)? Answering these questions correctly, will ensure that you purchase no more, or no less than what you need. But…..what if you already have everything you need in house?

Many organizations already have some if not all of the necessary infrastructure and software available to initiate an Identity Management Program. Ensure that the following are factored into your needs assessment. Chances are you have several of the following platforms/services already in place:

–Active Directory
–Sun One / iPlanet Directory Service
–Oracle / Sybase / MySQL /Microsoft SQL Database
–Current Web Server (Apache 2.x, IIS 5.x / 6.x)
–Solaris 9.x, 10.x / Windows 2003 / Linux 2.6x kernel
–Robust WAN links

Consider your existing platforms and services carefully, then determine what you need. Links Business Group IdM Consultants can assist with your needs analysis, program construction, vendor selection (if necessary,) and implementation services. Many vendors will try and sell you on a large packaged solution. While sometimes an integrated suite may be the best approach, other times a particular component or module is all that is required. For instance, your company may have already implemented Web Single Sign On, but does not have a strong auditing and reporting mechanism. Or, you may only need to centralize the provisioning function to reduce cost, and increase efficiency. Or, your development team may require external Identity services that can improve speed, increase efficiency, and reduce time to market.

Looking to fast track your Identity Program to the “future” state? Contact Links Business Group today to discuss the new options that exist in the Open Source, and “mixed” source worlds. There are many exciting breakthroughs in the world of Digital Identity Management, and we can help put your organization on the fast track to the future. Likewise, we can also help embrace and extend existing investments in legacy infrastructure.

Links Business Group, LLC can answer your Identity and Access Management questions, support your project from inception through completion, and put your company on the road to high ROI. Remember that Identity Management is the cornerstone of regulatory compliance, separation of duties, business optimization, data security, and single sign on (SSO), and business partner integration.

Success tip of the week: Socialize your Identity Management plans to stakeholders early, well, and often. Frequent and pointed communications — above all else — will determine success or failure.

1. Significant operational cost reduction
2. Reduced time to market
3. Reduced complexity
4. Improved Service Level Agreements (SLA)
5. Improved end-user experience
6. Reduced burden of compliance
7. Unified security reporting
8. Unified security auditing
9. Improved partner integration (Federation)
10. Improved user and systems management
11. Improved application and infrastructure security
12. Reduced risk exposure
13. One step closer to SOA
14. “Future Proofing” the application infrastructure and organization
15. Embrace and extend existing infrastructure and internal expertise
16. Enables an application security subscription model

The preceding list is by no means exhaustive, and individual organizations may have additional reasons.

Remember: Fundamentally, IAM is a set of processes and policies, which are designed implemented, and managed by people. IAM is *not* a set of tools or software.

For more information, please visit our Identity and Access Management site.