Thanks to a meeting with a vendor just before Christmas, I recently became aware that there are more open source identity management projects out there than you think (or at least, more than I thought). Some are still in a pretty embryonic stage, but others have been around for a long time. Who knows, we might even need to jury rig a solution if times get tough.
Here’s the list of open source idm projects that I’m actually now aware of:
And of course there is a whole bunch of stuff from Sun.
Has anyone used these successfully? Are there any others I’ve missed?
Identity and Access Management, Open Source
idm, opensource
This article came across my inbox the other day. Martha (the author) doesn’t really have a security / idm background, according to my (quick, possibly faulty) skim of her LinkedIn profile, so I was interested in her takeaway on security and SaaS and the role of identity in SaaS.
Identity management does get a few mentions (must be a good article), but the main quote I thought worth repeating was:
All of the firms I talked with for this piece referenced Symantec’s research about rogue employees and lost laptops as the primary sources of data loss and theft. Working in the cloud removes the laptop issue and even the smartphone issue.
The wow factor for me (the rest of the article is pretty rushed) is this is the first time I’ve read about cloud computing reducing risk for an organisation, rather than increasing it.
Alas, Martha only hints about identity services in the cloud, and a pretty limited implementation:
User security is rooted in role-based access and identity management. Identity management is maintained in the firm’s LDAP directories. Permissions and denials are controlled by the firm’s administrator. The directories can be either inside the firm’s firewall, at the SaaS provider’s site, or in a DMZ.
Now, if only a large software vendor would release some sort of framework for identity services in the cloud. Should SaaS vendors be looking into this?
Cloud Computing
cloud, idm, linkedin, risk, SaaS, symantec
Over the last few weeks I’ve been trying to be more active online. I’ve been tweeting, facebooking and more recently looking into LinkedIn groups. (I’d put a link here to my LinkedIn profile, but its in serious need of rework).
I’m not sure if you’ve looked into this yourself, but so far I’ve uncovered 6 groups (I’m sure there are more out there – ping me if you’ve got one not on the list). And they are:
My membership is still pending for the “Identity & Access Management” and “League of IAM Architects/Consultants” groups, but the others have some robust discussion at varying levels of technical detail.
And of course, there’s always those people who respond to a discussion by trying to flog their services. I tend to roll my eyes when I see one of those responses. However, one day I’ll probably be one of those people.
Collaborate
community, groups, identity management, linkedin
After days of toil, we’ve finally got the blog live. Identricity.com covers identity and access management news from Australia and around the world.
Where does the name come from? I think the identity part is clear, but well, there are some ‘eccentricities’ in our industry – minor nuances that anyone involved in IdM/IAM/IM projects in large enterprises can appreciate.
Any questions pr suggestions, feel free to ping me on ab@identricity.com or www.twitter.com/adrianbole. Stay tuned!
Identity and Access Management
ab, iam, identricity, idm, welcome