Identity Engines Delivers Platform for Network Ide?

So finally the company is out with the product. I have been hearing about this company for some time now. Any way seems like these guys are catering to the requirement of companies that want to control access to their network in much secured fashion. Most of these guys have need to perform the following functions
  • Sequestering the machine hooked to the environment unless validated (so it may not even be able to get a IP via dhcp)
  • the laptop would be checked for latest version of firewall, antivirus with the latest updates.
  • The user would need to authenticate to ensure that it gets access to the network.
  • (Not seen a lot though) if the user tries to access an application this access needs to be managed.
  • Auditing all these events with additional information for monitoring and analysis.
W.r.t. the third access requirement, I have seen most of the company already have something installed. For example web applications would have the Web SSO products. But most of the client server applications (which are not being fixed since they are not broken) are still out of the perview of the centralized solution. Now looking at the solution it seems to provide the
  • sequesting of machine - this is a tough nut to crack but I think combining with user authentication at switch level can achieve the same result.
  • user authentication - which is provided by most of the managed switches through support of 802.1x and RADIUS (I will be implementing something in next few days for my company and will have more to write about it at that time)
  • Application access control - I am not clear what is the mechanism implemented with regards to mapping the identity to a machine after machine has been authenticated. If it uses the IP address or mac address, then theoretically the battle is lost since these can be spoofed. So, would really be looking forward to get information on this.
  • Security Compliance - I did not see feature support for making sure machine is compliant before allowing it on network.
Something else that is bothering me is the possible requirement of provisioning the switches for sequestering new machine. I am not sure how comfortable the network guys would be with an system managing their boxes "automatically". I know that a lot of firewall and IPS do perform such operations but still it may be an interesting issue.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vendor List

Updated: November 12 2006 I am trying to come up with the list of vendors and associated products in the Identity and Access Management arena. Please note that this list is based on marketing/public information and my understanding of the terms which may not comply with any specific groups' definitions and/or requirements. This is by no means a complete list and will keep growing as I get more time to add them and find more companies (any help on that front will be really appreciated). Before we go further along, lets try to define what each of these product typically do so that my mode of classification may make sense or any flaw in my classfication will become apparant. Identity Management/User Provisioning These products typically provide the facility of Workflow-based Identity provisioning, password reset, identity reconciliation/discovery, delegated identity administration and self-service features on wide variety of identity platforms (like LDAP, Unix, Windows, Mainfra
Read more

Understanding IAM Technology: Web Single Sign On (Web SSO) Part I - Introduction and Use Case Definition

Image
Update September 6, 2015: Part II in the series is now available . Update August 19,2006: I am rewriting this entry based on the methodology I am using for some of other domains. Hopefully, the new methodology would make it more useful to some of you. I talk to a lot of people from developer background who still do not have a good background in the IAM technology. Eventhough there is a lot of information on the web, I have felt a lack of good technological discussion on the various component that  actually form the IAM domain. Some of the good sources for the information on IAM are Microsoft Identity and Access Management Series Archie Reed Oracle Federated Identity Buyers guide Oracle Identity Management Buyer's Guide Identity Management Dissected Most of these document discuss the basic concepts but do not extend it to existing technologies and how it applies to them. This series is an attempt to look at the technology behind the Identity and access manage
Read more

Reclaiming your account: Password Reset/Forgot Password

Image
This is probably one of the oldest functionality that is part of any password based system and by now I was hoping that people will have figured out most of the ways of doing it. But while reading answers on stackoverflow on this topic, I was impressed by new ways being developed and implemented by developers in wild. While reading the discussion I felt that there is lack of a structure to look and study this functionality and this post is an attempt to define a structure. Before I go there, I wanted to capture my understanding of the password reset functionality. Why - Well if we are not noting down all the accounts we have created in life (either electronically or manually), it is possible that we are going to forget passwords for some accounts as we age. Even if you follow some techniques like having standard passwords across all your accounts, due to site limitations, change in word preferences, etc, you may not remember the applicable password for a site and so the lifesaver Why
Read more