Dave Kearns Feed

This year's Catalyst Conference, very Oprah, very Cosmo

Dave Kearns — 2008-07-02T00:00:00Z

Last week's Burton Group Catalyst Conference might have been subtitled "The Oprah Year" ("Get Health, Beauty, Recipes, Money, Decorating and Relationship Advice on Oprah.com") because the buzz was all about relationships. Burton Vice President and Research Director Bob Blakley even illustrated his presentation with what could have been pictures clipped from Cosmo.

Catalyst keynote speaker: 'We need to think differently'

Dave Kearns — 2008-06-30T00:00:00Z

Last week was the annual Burton Group Catalyst Conference and, like last year, the announcements came fast and furious. There were new products, new companies and even a new organization. It's going to take a few newsletters to cover them all, so I better get started. First, though, I want to capture the overall theme and tone of the conference.

Re-using employee ID numbers, or not

Dave Kearns — 2008-06-25T00:00:00Z

Sometimes a clarification succeeds only in further muddying the waters. That's what I did last week, not for the first time either. Probably won't be the last, though. It's concerning that issue of re-using identifiers and re-using employee ID numbers. At the risk of further muddying things, let's take a final look (for now) at the issues.

Provisioning/de-provisioning in the education sector

Dave Kearns — 2008-06-23T00:00:00Z

Provisioning/de-provisioning in the education sector.

Identity Bus discussion focuses on re-hires

Dave Kearns — 2008-06-18T00:00:00Z

Last week's newsletter about the Identity Bus raised a number of issues in the Network World forums, some of which I addressed last newsletter. But there was another issue raised that deserves its own discussion.

Identity Bus topic sparks community discussion

Dave Kearns — 2008-06-16T00:00:00Z

Last week's newsletter re-visiting the Identity Bus contrasting virtual data storage with persistent data storage brought forth a number of comments on the Network World Web site, which I’d like to address today.

Dealing with orphan accounts and de-provisioning

Dave Kearns — 2008-06-11T00:00:00Z

I want to add just a bit more on orphan accounts and de-provisioning before we move on to the next round of conferences (Burton's Catalyst in two weeks, then next month's inaugural SSO Summit get together).

Re-visiting the Identity Bus/Hub issue

Dave Kearns — 2008-06-09T00:00:00Z

Today I want to re-visit the Identity Bus/Hub issue, which is also caught up with the choice between completely virtual directories and persistent storage metadirectories.

Time to investigate orphaned accounts

Dave Kearns — 2008-06-04T00:00:00Z

De-provisioning is the act of removing access for a user's account while not necessarily removing the account (which most likely will still be needed for a while for compliance auditing and other reasons). Almost all current provisioning software includes modules to de-provision accounts, but that hasn't always been the case. As I noted in an article about the first identity provisioning application, back in 1999, de-provisioning was in the road map for the second release. By now I'd expected that a) just about everyone would have installed provisioning software; and b) most of those would include de-provisioning as a feature. I was wrong.

What's hot and what's not for role management

Dave Kearns — 2008-06-02T00:00:00Z

Roles are not necessary for governance, risk, compliance and entitlement (GRCE) management, just as roads aren't necessary in order to drive cars. And just as it would be foolish to consider driving from, say, San Francisco to New York without using roads so too would it be foolish to consider implementing GRCE management without roles. I was reminded of this when a press release crossed my desk a couple of weeks ago.