We had an very interesting meeting last week around the implementation of identity management to improve an organisations portals. We looked at some of the key issues shared by some of our customers

Common Issues and Challenges....

• Identity data scattered across multiple applications and stores is complex, expensive and time-consuming to maintain
• Identity stores are not integrated requiring manual processes to synchronise, leading to delays in servicing end user requests
• Personalisation of content and function cannot be achieved when identity data is scattered across multiple locations
• Users are required to authenticate multiple times to access portal and then access applications within portal: leading to dissatisfaction and risk of credentials being lost or stolen
• Provisioning and de-provisioning of users is a constant strain on IT helpdesk
• Fine-grained protection of data and contents often requires security policies to be hard-coded into the portlets. This is time-consuming and expensive to maintain
• Strong authentication to prevent fraud, data loss and identity theft is achieved via smartcards and tokens which are an additional cost and management burden

We still find some companies, NHS trusts, universities ect are not aware of the real potential of identity management (IDM) and single sign on (SSO) to erradicate the above issues, vastly reducing system down-time, costs and IT helpdesk burden while increasing infrastucture stability and security.

With this in mind I'm currently contacting organisations to discuss the many benefits of IDM and SSO.