"Another challenge is that identity data is typically decentralized. The
Department of Motor Vehicles issues drivers licenses, for example, while
the Department of Homeland Security issues passports, banks track
financial histories, and so on. Most of these organizations have
isolated and centralized identity management systems, but the current
landscape demands federation and single sign-on (SSO). This makes identity management, protection and verification very cumbersome, costly and risky for all industry enterprises and government agencies."
Jai Singh Arun - Security and Blockchain Innovations Program Director, IBM
Identity architectural landscape is changing and personally I can only think of this very simple analogy between identities and blockchain.
Identities to the blockchain are what the bees are to the honey..
This is as simple as even your grandma would understand :)
Bees (identities) all day collect honey somewhere in the fields.
Coming back to their beehive colony (permission based blockchain distributed ledger) they decide how much honey to contribute to the overall beehive. Once they put their honey in it becomes an irreversible and immutable transaction. So all the bees in the colony contribute to the honey collection (blockchain :) The honey grows drop by drop just like blockchain grows block by block.
From the beekeeper (book-keeper in the blockchain ledger) perspective bees identities are irrelevant as he/she is only interested in the final product - honey.
Bees do care about their own identities as only workers are allowed to contribute (permission based)
It is beautiful system and everything is organised and ordered nicely.
Now why this is better than the current approach to the IDAM.
Simple to see and understand:
1. Identity Services sprawl
IDAM vendor proliferation stays in the way of the standard unified approach to the identity and access management
Ask yourself a simple question: How many IDAM vendors are out there? Each with the separate product, approach and roadmap. How many identities silos out there as each company have different products in its production stack. Each vendor touts its own product superiority :)
(Children playing in the sandpit with their toy trucks. Mine is better than yours....)
Of course a lot of innovation came out of the competition and we would not be here as if not for the vendors - Oracle, SailPoint, CA, IBM, RSA, Dell, NetIQ, Okta, Centrify, CyberArk - to name a few ( the list is pretty long)
2. Identity Data sprawl
Ask yourself: "How many identity silos my own identity is part of?"
"Do you have any control over who, when and how accesses your identity data?"
Everyone wants your Social Security Number right? Your Driver Licence number, and the list goes on and on...
Ask yourself how many high profile identity data breaches were in the past few years and how many innocent identities were stolen? Few CEO's lost their jobs along the way as well.
And how many of the breaches were not reported in fear of bad publicity etc. etc.?
3. Identity Standards sprawl
How many identity and access management standards are out there?
Gee where do I start?
Final thoughts:
Now is a different times with centralised approach to identity management systems and decentralised approach to storing the identity data is no longer a viable solution. Too much of the residual risk.
In times of Microservices, Devops, Serverless backends and cloud SaaS we can do better.
Blockchain better :)
Jai Singh Arun - Security and Blockchain Innovations Program Director, IBM
Identity architectural landscape is changing and personally I can only think of this very simple analogy between identities and blockchain.
Identities to the blockchain are what the bees are to the honey..
This is as simple as even your grandma would understand :)
Bees (identities) all day collect honey somewhere in the fields.
Coming back to their beehive colony (permission based blockchain distributed ledger) they decide how much honey to contribute to the overall beehive. Once they put their honey in it becomes an irreversible and immutable transaction. So all the bees in the colony contribute to the honey collection (blockchain :) The honey grows drop by drop just like blockchain grows block by block.
From the beekeeper (book-keeper in the blockchain ledger) perspective bees identities are irrelevant as he/she is only interested in the final product - honey.
Bees do care about their own identities as only workers are allowed to contribute (permission based)
It is beautiful system and everything is organised and ordered nicely.
Now why this is better than the current approach to the IDAM.
Simple to see and understand:
1. Identity Services sprawl
IDAM vendor proliferation stays in the way of the standard unified approach to the identity and access management
Ask yourself a simple question: How many IDAM vendors are out there? Each with the separate product, approach and roadmap. How many identities silos out there as each company have different products in its production stack. Each vendor touts its own product superiority :)
(Children playing in the sandpit with their toy trucks. Mine is better than yours....)
Of course a lot of innovation came out of the competition and we would not be here as if not for the vendors - Oracle, SailPoint, CA, IBM, RSA, Dell, NetIQ, Okta, Centrify, CyberArk - to name a few ( the list is pretty long)
2. Identity Data sprawl
Ask yourself: "How many identity silos my own identity is part of?"
"Do you have any control over who, when and how accesses your identity data?"
Everyone wants your Social Security Number right? Your Driver Licence number, and the list goes on and on...
Ask yourself how many high profile identity data breaches were in the past few years and how many innocent identities were stolen? Few CEO's lost their jobs along the way as well.
And how many of the breaches were not reported in fear of bad publicity etc. etc.?
3. Identity Standards sprawl
How many identity and access management standards are out there?
Gee where do I start?
Final thoughts:
Now is a different times with centralised approach to identity management systems and decentralised approach to storing the identity data is no longer a viable solution. Too much of the residual risk.
In times of Microservices, Devops, Serverless backends and cloud SaaS we can do better.
Blockchain better :)
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