Identity management

‘Identity management’ in some ways is an extension of the concepts of  access control and authentication. The current business environment is complex and getting more complex with time. There are numerous departments(like CRM, ERP and HR) and networks. There are hundreds of business users(like employees, customers and partners) constantly logging into systems and accessing different resources. Employees might also move onto different departments and they might also quit and move onto different organizations. How do we handle the huge responsibility of checking the credentials of the users, authentication them and authorization them? This is done by process of ‘identity management’.
‘Identity management’ involves the process of first identifying the user, authenticating the user and authorizing them to access appropriate resources in an automated way. ‘Identity management’ solutions have to handle the huge task of assigning access to  different users across multiple systems. They also have to make sure that the access is neither too restricted nor too broad.  ‘Identity management’ solutions also involves revoking the credentials of former employees so that cannot access the old resources again.
 

Advantages of IDM solutions:
In the earlier days, IDM solutions were manual, but with today’s complex business scenario, automated solutions are the need of the hour. IDM solutions offer these advantages:

1. They increase the productivity in an organization(administrators do not have to spend time configuring the different settings for different users)
2. Security in the organization is enhanced since users are given appropriate access and single-sign on is implemented

IDM solutions:
A number of organizations offer IDM solutions and here are a few of them:

1. Computer Associates Identity and access management
2. IBM Identity and access management
3. Oracle Identity management

Seamless digital transitions in today’s business scenario is possible because of sophisticated identity management’ solutions. 
This post is for alphabet ‘M’ of the #Blogchatter challenge. The previous post can be found here.