Technology

You’ve just adopted a new service! Great! But no one is using it. Why not? It appears that no one has access to the application, so no one wants to create a new account with a new set of credentials. Even worse, the team who created the system failed to port over all the users. Would you want to use such a system? This scenario may sound odd, but…

Provisioning is the process of making information technology (IT) systems available to users. Depending on your organisation’s needs, provisioning can be defined at the network, server, application, and user level: Network provisioning involves setting up a network that can be accessed by users, servers, and devices. The telecommunications…

Biometric authentication is a security process that compares a person’s characteristics to a stored set of biometric data in order to grant access to buildings, applications, systems, and more. With cybercrime, fraud, and identity theft on the rise, it’s more important than ever for businesses to help customers and employees verify their identity,…

A password manager is an application that stores and manages online credentials—think of it as a type of vault that keeps passwords safe. In addition, password managers make it easier to access apps and websites since they can automatically input login details. Everyone who uses a computer or smartphone is likely familiar with switching between…

As the great Mark Twain once wrote in response to reading his own obituary in May of 1897, “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Fast forward nearly a hundred years to 1995, and a Finnish computer scientist named Tatu Ylönen created a secure transport protocol known simply as Secure Shell (SSH). What do these things have to do with…

In the days before widespread use of the web, a user would log into a single server (or a handful of servers) and only have to remember one or two passwords. Applications were assumed to be for a single user, and didn’t require login credentials. Then, as the internet began to gain popularity and applications begin to be run on the web, the number…

Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) is a Single Sign-On (SSO) solution created by Microsoft. As a component of Windows Server operating systems, it provides users with authenticated access to applications that are not capable of using Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA) through Active Directory (AD). Developed to provide flexibility,…

With the rise in both the number and sophistication of today’s security threats, the benefits of multi-factor authentication (MFA) have become widely recognized, leading to increased adoption across enterprise and consumer apps. From a security standpoint, this is all good news. We know that passwords alone are not enough to secure your data, and…

The world of Identity and Access Management (IAM) is rarely controversial. But today, there is a battle brewing in how we - as an industry - talk about customer-facing use cases for IAM. Many are starting to refer to this as Customer IAM or Consumer IAM, both abbreviated as CIAM. CIAM does have some unique requirements. But that does not mean that…

In today’s identity management climate, single sign-on (SSO) capability is critical to the success of enterprise identity and access management (IAM). IT departments face growing demands: managing thousands of users, both internal and external, who each need access to an increasing number of cloud-based applications. Adding to this complexity is…