Add Some Architecture to RSA 2010

Once again the RSA Conference is giving Dan Houser and I the opportunity to provide a one-day Identity Management Architecture tutorial. One-day tutorials can be added to your RSA Conference registration for a small fee. These sessions are designed to provide more depth and detail on particular important topics.

This year’s program is titled “Foundations for Success: Enterprise Identity Management Architecture”, and the content follows the successful pattern of past years. The morning will focus on establishing a base of understanding, and the afternoon will be spent covering modules selected by the attendees (the description from the RSA website is attached below).

This year I am especially excited as I am leading a major Information Security infrastructure initiative that involves the complete build out of the Information Security stack for a new company (actually a $2.4B spin-off). I have just completed full requirements, RFP, and the product selection cycle for an Identity Management solution. At the time of the class, I will be at the mid-point of the provisioning system’s deployment, and will have Password Vaulting in production. This project has been a source of great challenges and new insights, all of which I hope to bring with me on March 1st (well, the insights anyway).

Identity Management is at the core of a successful Information Security program. In many ways, it is the primary technical control for policy enforcement and oversight. In addition to the important role Identity Management plays in risk management and oversight, many of your business partners think of Identity Management “as” Information Security. The question of “how do I get access to X” is a question near and dear to the heart of your business partners. Many of the security controls we all work with day to day are largely invisible to business partners, but password problems, access request delays, and audit findings are very visible to them.

Information about the tutorial is available form the RSA 1-Day Tutorials page, but here is a copy of the tutorial description:

Tutorial ID : TUT-M21

Foundations for Success: Enterprise Identity Management Architecture

Identity and Access Management is the foundation for access controls in the Enterprise, a mission-critical IT function that is both the lifeblood of your business, and a frustrating and difficult beast to tame. Your IdM infrastructure is more complicated, with more moving parts, and more partners across the enterprise, than any other security related service.

This interactive session, taught by experienced IdM veterans and practitioners, provides an architectural view to resolving identity challenges, and will provide detailed and informative discussions on directory services, web access management, Single Sign-on, federated identity, authorization, provisioning and more. The morning session will provide an overview of the foundations of IdM, while the afternoon will provide a customized, detailed and interactive session to focus on the specific identity disciplines they find most challenging.

This workshop will cover:

  • Principles of Identity and Access Management and implementation strategies
  • Infrastructure architecture — critical underlying processes to run a successful enterprise
  • Web-based authentication & Web Access Management
  • Selling Identity strategy in the C-suite
  • Directory Services – Enterprise, meta-directories and virtual directories
  • Provisioning – managing the processes of Identity and Access Management
  • Identity mapping and roll-up
  • Detailed Single Sign-on strategies: Getting off Identity islands
  • Detailed Federated Identity discussion and case studies
  • Gritty Reality of Federation SSO: Lessons learned from 14 major federation projects
  • Multi-factor authentication: biometrics, tokens & more
  • Functional IDs – real world considerations of this often forgotten access control
  • User Access Audit: Proving only authorized users have access
  • Auditing the identity systems

Key Learning Objectives:
Participants should have a basic background in Information Security, IT systems, and identity management. After the class, participants should feel well grounded in identity management, understand the broad landscape from both a technical as well as a business perspective, and have gained practical insight into the strategies which will enable them to meet identity challenges in their organization.

Cheers,
Erik

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