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One Man, One Goal, One Identity Management Vision

Identity
Author: Mark Dixon
Thursday, June 5, 2008
6:40 am

At the Sun Identity Management Roadshow held yesterday at the New York City Hilton, Toby Emden, Chief Security Architect for Traveler’s Insurance, gave an excellent presentation about his company’s Identity Management program, which includes deployment of Sun’s Identity Management product suite.

I was particularly impressed with one slide where Toby articulated his vision for the overall initiative. I include it here with his permission:

The Vision

One man, One goal, One mission. One heart, One soul, just one solution. One flash of light, yeah, One God, One Vision” – Freddie Mercury/Queen

  • One Directory Infrastructure to manage all entitlements
  • One Provisioning Platform for all critical infrastructure directories and SOX relevant applications
  • One Administration Point, where policies and separation of duties rules are defined in the context of available services
  • One Identity, based on who you are instead of where you are
  • One Policy Decision Point, enabling consistency and risk-based analysis in approving access requests
  • One view of who is doing what, who has access to what, and who granted access to what and when

This view of unity and architectural simplicity sets a strong vision to guide the progressive implementation of Traveler’s Identity Management program. Toby’s subsequent explanation of his plan for realizing the vision through well-structured major releases and subordinate projects illustrates Travelers’ adherence to sound Identity Management implementation principles.

Thanks, Toby, for sharing your insight and granting me permission to publish this blog post.

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2 Responses to “One Man, One Goal, One Identity Management Vision”

    Very cool. We can have the best technology in the world, but it is useless unless high-level sponsorship will proselytize the Identity Management strategy/vision.

    Comment by Chris C on June 5, 2008 at 7:02 am

    I was also at the user group meeting and thought Toby gave one of the best presentations on IdM program strategy that I’ve seen, for sure the best speaker of the day. Even the jokes and Star Wars references were funny. He stressed the importance of executive sponsorship, establishing robust governance, engaging experienced integration partners and the risks associated with trying to do too much too quickly without quantifying business value. These principles are key to any successful IdM implementation, but this guy really showed that he gets it. I thought he articulated a very clear and pragmatic vision that offers every chance for success.

    Comment by J.D. on June 5, 2008 at 7:12 pm

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