The weather is great in San Diego. I took an early morning walk along the pier near the Manchester Grand Hyatt where the conference is being held. One of the large yachts moored at the pier was from Scottsdale, Arizona. I had to ask myself, "Why is a yacht from the desert of Arizona being moored in San Diego?" Perhaps the question should have been, "How in the world can a yacht be based in the desert of Arizona?" Anyway, it's pleasant to be in the relatively cool weather of San Diego while Arizona experiences heat of 110+ degrees.

In the blog entry for each day of the conference, I'll point out highlights I liked from each speaker in the track I attended (Identity and Privacy Track).

• Identity management (IdM) is a strategic business issue. It is a crucial part of the distributed infrastructure "interoperable fabric" necessary to support new ways of creating economic value. Similarly, IdM is a crucial part of the fabric necessary to support new media for social interaction outside the enterprise.
• Architects must understand larger context where business, technology combine. Identity Management is 80% politics and business, 20% technology.
• Identity coalesces into services as Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) reach critical mass.

Mike Neuenschwander, Associate Research Director, Burton Group - Taking a Holistic Approach to Identity and Privacy in the Enterprise

• Architecting identity systems requires an understanding of more than its constituent technologies
• Enduring systems account for multiple views by focus on relationship
• The goal of Identity Management is to establish an enabling infrastructure. It is a means, not an end.

Scott Blackmer, Attorney at Law - Information Compliance

• Enterprises must shoulder a greater and greater burden of compliance, due to government regulation in response to information security and privacy threats.
• There are considerable inefficiencies aand overhead to deal with threats from the dishonest and evil people.
• The old worry was Big Brother. The new worry is lots of Little Brothers - sharing data, losing data.

Jarrod Jasper, Chief Identity Management Architect, General Motors - GM Identity Management

• Identity Managements helps answer the question, "How long does it take to enable a desired relationship so someone can get to work?"
• Initial charter for their Identity Management strategy: "To enable users to easily and consistently access enterprise information and systems."
• Focus on enabling the business to execute business decisions efficiently
• Get repeatable results by leveraging standards.

John Loiacono, Executive Vice President, Software, Sun Microsystems - Uniting the Universe: Identity Management Enables the Participation Age

• The .com era was a proof of concept- a forerunner of the Participation Era
• Identity Management will drive Participation by enabling relationships
• Sun Removes Barriers to Participation by establishing Open Identity
• Federation align participants for rapid growth and infinite scale
• Open SSO will provide source code for basic identity services including Authentication, Single-domain SSO, and Web and J2EE agents.

Phil Blank, Vice president, Information Technology, ADP - Discovering The True You

• The Identity Management Solution implemented by ADP (using the Waveset Lighthouse product) reduced risk, provided a complete view of each user's identity and enabled efficient, automated operations.
• The ease of SOX audits was a serendipitous benefit that came with the system.
• We should talk business process and business value of Identity Management to business owners.

Nick Nikols, Analyst, Burton Group - IT Governance and its Effectiveness within IdM Programs

• A pragmatic approach toward governance leads to success
• IdM governance is about managing the IdM lifecycle
• Establish Identity Management Governence through a decision-making body that spans constituencies
• Establish clear metrics for measuring effectiveness

Kevin Kampman, Practice Manager and Senior Consultant, Burton Group - Reality of Roles: Practical Role Engineering

• User rigor and discipline in defining a role architecture
• Roles are the intersection of responsibilties, privileges and context
• Don't put roles on the critical path of an Identity Management project

Randall Gamby, Principal Consultant, Burton Group - The Value of Business Process and Workflow in the Lifecycle of Identity Management

• Processes and governance are more important than technology
• In reality, Identity Management is an integration of applications, process and technology
• Workflow deals with relationships between people

Edmund Yee, Identity Management Architect, Chevron - Implementing Stronger Identity at Chevron

• Number One problem that drove Identity Management: Password Management
• Take time to define rules and processes
• Build identical test and production systems

Roundable - Compliance and Identity Management

• Sara Gates, VP, Identity Management, Sun Microsystems
  • Good behavior can be forced by regulation, even for common sense things (such as wearing a seat belt)
  • Auditors are now at the table influencing IdM decisions.
  • Audit and compliance can become an enabler for new business opportunities
• Frank Auger, VP, Product Management, Identity-Driven Products, Novell
  • Compliance forces a sense of urgency, which can force a healthy long term systemic approach.
  • Enterprises may achieve compliance at the expense of competitiveness and agility unless they implement systems to support the compliance effort.
• Prakash Ramamurthy, VP, Security and Identity Products, Oracle
  • Compliance is doing things right every day - fixing business process.
  • Compliance is now a budget line item
• Cindy Sterling, Director, Identity Management, BMC Software
  • Federation is still very young.
  • The impact of compliance on federation is not known.

Note: A computer malfunction that occured during the conference prevented me from posting this blog entry until Tuesday, July 19th.

Tag: Identity