Security: Controlling resource access

The technology of identity management promises the moon and then some. Proponents say it will let companies reduce user management costs, increase security, ensure privacy and comply with federal regulations.

According to our Special Focus author this week (jfontana@nww.com) the trend is seen in end-user projects, in consolidation of vendors and product categories, and the appearance of broad suites of identity management software from the likes of Computer Associates, IBM, Novell, Microsoft, RSA, Sun and others.

Meanwhile researchers at The Burton Group predict every organization will be involved in an identity management project within the next two-years. That conclusion points to the fact that corporations can no longer ignore the need to manage a user’s identity from creation to deletion, which ensures logging and auditing of who is on the network, what they are doing, why and when.

Providing all that control, however, leads to a complex identity management infrastructure that includes access management, provisioning, meta-directory, virtual directory, password management, single sign-on (SSO), and directory technology, our author states.

That complexity is driving three major trends in the market – the development of product suites, vendor consolidation and the merging of product categories.

Research firm Gartner says by next year, the complexity of integrating the components of identity and access management packages will cause 60% of corporations to choose product suites that are owned or licensed by, and supported through, one vendor. Gartner says integration costs can be from two to six times the cost of the software license fee for identity management products.

For more on this story see: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0607specialfocus.html