IDA for dummies

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What is Identity & Access Management…….heard a lot about it…read about it? worked on it?

 

How it came in to existence?

Very interesting field…which came into existence about 9 to 10 years back. It was not even called Identity Management then. It started with the issue around maintaining too many user ids for users and managing those.

 

Programs were developed to provide centralized administration of users i.e. create the users, delete them, manage their accounts, passwords. The programs were rudimentary but definitely served the purpose of user management. Hence, the concept of Identity Management was born.

 

What is Identity Management?

Search in any search engines and you would get various definitions.

In simple words, Identity Management is a integration of people, processes & Technology enabling organizations to -

  • manage the user’s life cycle in the organization based on the roles
  • maintain the passwords of users
  • facilitate the creation / population of attributes that are critical from business perspective.

 

In other words, Identity Management should provide you the capabilities to manage -

  • creation, deletion and management of users.
  • the access rights a.k.a authorization
  • the access restrictions i.e. when can the user access, which time of day, date, time etc.
  • the account profiles i.e. the users home address, mobile number, telephone etc.
  • passwords; and
  • any other attribute the business applications could need.

 

So, in much shorter word…..

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Right people - Right Access – Right Time, keeping the bad guys out :)

More on this a it later…….