What is Identity Management?

Half of the M in IAM–Identity Management encompasses a set of functionalities from identity lifecycle management, provisioning, role management, to design and implementation of workflows, for the purpose of providing a central service for managing identity creation and management– and ultimately securing access to resources. How are identities defined, managed, and leveraged across the organization? IdM is the practice that addresses these questions.

Why bother?

IdM is an essential part of the equation for determining that the right users have access to the right resources. A secure and well-managed IT organization will assemble a robust framework and set of technologies that accomplish IdM. The biggest challenge in identity management continues to be managing disparate populations and their entitlements across different data silos. With the growing complexity of the enterprise infrastructure, organizations are wrestling with the challenges of managing secure access and administration of employee, customer, partner, and vendor identity across a wide range of systems. Managing multiple sources of user identities and security contexts across all of these applications is a daunting task, but with the right identity foundation in place, IdM can be significantly streamlined, and enhance an organization’s security and efficiency, while reducing manual effort and expense.