Driven by network security concerns, regulatory legislation and cost savings, identity management is climbing the corporate importance meter. The trend is seen in end-user projects, in consolidation of vendors and product categories, and the appearance of broad suites of identity management software from Computer Associates, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, RSA Security, Sun and others. "The question is, What kinds of risks will we be taking if we are without identity management?" says Ahmed El-Haggan, CIO and professor of computer science at Coppin State University in Baltimore. "We are adding a lot of access that we didn't offer before so the question becomes, Can we live without identity management in the future?" El-Haggan's answer is "no," and he has started to address the issue by rolling out IdentityMinder eProvi-sion from Netegrity, which lets 4,000 students and eventually 4,000 staff and alumni create and manage their own identities for e-mail accounts and network access. "We call it on-demand access," El-Haggan says.
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