Sun Identity Management (IDM) Tutorial Data Center Security Policy: Solutions that work in your environment. Today’s enterprise is operating an increasing number of secure systems and applications and, at the same time, moving beyond its traditional boundaries to work with more and more outside partners who have their own secure IT infrastructures. By making it possible to securely share identity information across internal and external resources, effective identity management enables secure, efficient interoperability in even the most diverse environments. Without it, secure administration and management of all these systems and applications would be a nightmare, if not an impossibility.

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Solutions that work in your environment.

Today’s enterprise is operating an increasing number of secure systems and applications and, at the same time, moving beyond its traditional boundaries to work with more and more outside partners who have their own secure IT infrastructures. By making it possible to securely share identity information across internal and external resources, effective identity management enables secure, efficient interoperability in even the most diverse environments. Without it, secure administration and management of all these systems and applications would be a nightmare, if not an impossibility.

Integrating the operations of systems and applications within and beyond the enterprise requires the secure sharing of identity information in several specific ways.

Protecting the security of resources

To protect the security of resources, enterprises must be able to ensure that users are who they say they are, and are authorized to use the resources to which they request access. This is one of the basic tenets of identity management. This capability must extend beyond the enterprise to include systems and applications across a variety of external partners, suppliers, and others with whom the enterprise does business online. Effective identity management includes mechanisms for sharing identity information and credentials across systems and applications, without compromising the security of either the resources being accessed or the identity information being offered.

Providing the convenience of single sign-on (SSO)

Less than ten years ago, having a different sign-on for every resource or application was little more than a minor inconvenience for users. Today, it’s not unusual for users to need secure access to hundreds of applications — and a separate sign-on for each one is untenable. That’s what makes SSO such an important capability of effective identity management. It contributes widespread, secure accessibility of systems and applications by enabling users to use one sign-on for every system or application.

Effective identity management solutions offer several varieties of SSO to address increasing levels of accessibility and convenience:

• Enterprise SSO enables one sign-on for the resources within the enterprise that the user is authorized to access.
• Web SSO works with standard browsers to enable one sign-on for Web applications.
• Desktop SSO employs the desktop browser to leverage desktop authentication as a means of seamlessly accessing multiple resources.