Extending identity management's realm

摘要

With the security benefits and administrative efficiencies of user identity management coming into focus for IT leaders, some experts say those same benefits can be extended to routers, switches, applications, Web services and devices by creating a common interoperable identity model for other nodes on a network. The thinking is that the two together - the identities of users and things - complete an infrastructure capable of policy-based management and security for the distributed computing environment of the future. Experts say the goal is to have one place to administer and apply security and management controls based on a set of policies or permissions that can be applied via identity. "It's a single point for administering policies, a single infrastructure for enforcing policies and a single infrastructure for storing policies that are applicable to anything that can be named or identified," says James Kobielus, an independent consultant and analyst. "It's about management efficiencies, tighter security and more consistent security across your entire infrastructure." Users say it's high time the user identity concept was expanded.