Identity risk management vies for attention in the crowded ID management space

Identity Management This newsletter is sponsored by Arsenal Digital Solutions Solving the Distributed Data Protection Problem Hackers, disgruntled and careless employees, equipment failure, broken pipes, fires, and natural disasters all pose threats to your data. Savvy IT and business managers have recognized that in order to deal with these challenges, they need to deploy a company-wide data protection infrastructure. Click here to read this whitepaper today! Network World's Identity Management Newsletter, 07/11/07 Identity risk management vies for attention in the crowded ID management space By Dave Kearns Last issue I was musing about trends and “weddings” observed at the Catalyst conference, and this time I’ll bring up a wedding reception as well as a trendy niche in identity management. The guys and girls from Waveset were last seen at Catalyst wearing sharks on their heads (see “Memorable moments from Catalyst 2003”) before heading off to relatively stodgy Sun. But now that they’ve re-emerged as Sailpoint Technologies, their rarely suppressed sense of humor has re-emerged. At Catalyst, they threw a wedding reception – complete with a “bride”, a “groom” and a wedding cake! As CEO Mark McClain put it, “We always try to overachieve in the creativity department!” And overachieve is what the company may have to do to conquer the emerging niche it dubs Identity Risk Management and some others call Compliance Management, but which is being rolled into Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) management by some. Also part of the grouping is what some vendors are calling Entitlement Management, defined by one such vendor, Securent, as a method that “…enables organizations to administer, enforce, and audit fine-grained access policies across heterogeneous application and IT environments, all with centralized management and visibility. The significant time to market, security, compliance, and cost reduction benefits of [Entitlement Management] have been proven at many Fortune 500 customers.” Get Everyone from the CEO to the MySpace Generation to Support Your Security Plans. September 10-11, 2007 | The Fairmont Chicago How do you get everyone from the boardroom to the mailroom to comply with your security initiatives? Come collaborate with peers on critical business topics like this at The Security Standard-the only business summit for senior security executives. For the latest in planning and management strategies. Click here for more details. Click here for more details I don’t know what we’re eventually going to call this area of identity management. It is an outgrowth of the rush to implement regulatory compliance that we saw over the past couple of years, but now people want to reduce their costs while getting better automatic controls. Since being compliant also requires better security (i.e., risk management) and oversight (i.e., governance), while technologies such as role management and role-based access control can reduce costs while improving automation, I think we’re going to see some fluidity in this space for a while as more and more vendors seek to be part of what promises to be a required group of technologies for just about any business. There isn’t one, but numerous nascent trends here, and only time will tell which will emerge and which will disappear. We’ll keep watching.   What do you think? Post a comment on this newsletter

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Contact the author: Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be found at Virtual Quill. Kearns is the author of two Network World Newsletters: Windows Networking Strategies, and Identity Management. Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these respective addresses: windows@vquill.com, identity@vquill.com . Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail. This newsletter is sponsored by Arsenal Digital Solutions Solving the Distributed Data Protection Problem Hackers, disgruntled and careless employees, equipment failure, broken pipes, fires, and natural disasters all pose threats to your data. Savvy IT and business managers have recognized that in order to deal with these challenges, they need to deploy a company-wide data protection infrastructure. Click here to read this whitepaper today! ARCHIVE Archive of the Identity Management Newsletter. BONUS FEATURE IT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details. PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today. International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: security.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007