IDENTITY & ACCESS MANAGEMENT

Information about Identity Management, Access Management and Federations

(Federated) Identity & Access Management

DAASI International offers comprehensive services in the field of federated Identity & Access Management (IAM). To understand federated IAM in its full complexity and to get a first impression, this page provides you with fundamental information about the three individual components: Identity Management, Access Management and Federations.

What Is Identity Management?

Identity Management (IdM) are IT systems and applications that administrate information about the identities of users – if required, completely automised.

Complexity and Risk without Identity Management

You know one or more of the following problems?

• It takes very long until a new employee gets his or her own e-mail account.
• A former employee still has access to your systems.
• You have to remember several passwords for every application or service.
• There are no or only inconvenient processes for creating a user account.
• The system administration or helpdesk is overwhelmed with the administration of the many user accounts (e.g. setting new passwords etc.)

Conventional user management stores user accounts and staff data redundantly in different databases and applications, which leads to an unecessarily high administrative workload.

If a new employee (in our example Mrs. Smith) joins an organisation without an Identity Management system, she has to contact a number of different administrative staff members or admins to be registered into various data bases and to get new accounts and access to certain resources.

If information about Mrs. Smith changes, e.g. her position, name or address, she has to contact all admins again. When Mrs. Smith leaves the organisation, all concerned staff members will have to change the respective access rights immediately to eliminate potential security risks.

In summary, missing Identity Management leads to

• much more administration expense (and thus, more costs),
• redundant and inconsistent amount of data and
• risks in security and data privacy.

More efficiency and security with Identity Management

Identity Management uses several technologies to automatically synchronise the individual systems and databases. This often happens by a central database that is administrated in a directory service (in this case called metadirectory).

With a metadirectory, the data only have to be entered and maintained in one place. The metadirectory automatically updates and synchronises the data among all connected databases and target systems.

In this way, Mrs. Smith can conveniently have her data changed at a helpdesk or by the HR staff. When she is leaving the organization, some clicks are enough to securely delete her data and access rights.

Advantages: In Short, Identity Management Helps to

• Reduce Administrative Workload and Costs, and Increase Efficiency
  Time is money. Due to optimised workflows the effectiveness of your staff will be increased, time will be saved, and thus costs will be reduced.
• Establish Consistent Data and Data Structures, and Ensure a High Level of Security and Data Privacy
  Administrating data at a central place will ensure clear structures and up-to-date data. Therefore, possible (addressing) errors will be prevented, the understanding of your systems will be facilitated, and storage capacity will be deallocated.
• Increase Employee Satisfaction
  Your administrative staff will be relieved by automatic and clear processes. Additionally, your employees will be thankful for only having to approach one central office, if accounts are created quickly and automatically, and if they only have to login once a day to access all necessary services.

Identity Management is recommended to all organisations which work with many identity information: universities, authorities, institutions, large-scale and midsize companies etc.

Depending on the organisation, identities are for example employees, members, guests, customers, students, or in the case of Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 every ‘thing’ which communicates via the network.

DAASI International is experienced in working together with all organisational forms and in flexibly integrating Identity Management systems into various IT structures.

You plan to establish an Identity & Access Management system in your organisation?

Or you want to participate in a federation? DAASI International will gladly assist you in your endeavour.