INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Enterprise Security
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Bringing it to the business
Identity management will always be
crucial, and biometric authentication
is just one method that we will see
organisations using in the future.
There are, however, other software-
driven systems – such as key-stroke
tracking – which can bridge the gap
and help change an organisation’s
culture in preparation for a more fluid
and dynamic IT system. While the
enthusiasm and desire for improved
accessibility may be there, the technical
know-how is not always present.
With many organisations operating
with legacy infrastructure, it can be a
challenge to bring newer technologies
into the IT estate. Businesses need a
technology partner that can help them
bridge this gap.
Deepak Narain, Regional Presales Manager, MENA, VMware
accustomed to accessing their mobile devices via a fingerprint, having to type
long passwords to access their organisation’s IT seems terribly old fashioned. It
is also not as effective – passwords can be guessed, or even broken with the right
technology – indeed, an experiment by Ars Technica demonstrated how easily
this could be done, with one hacker cracking over 14,800 passwords in less than
an hour by using a computer cluster.
Part of the emerging advancements in biometric security include thumbprints
being accompanied by retinal scanning as well as facial and body language
recognition. And while we may be some way off the biometric identification
technology that was central to the recent film X-Men: Days of Future Past – in
which the mutant population could be identified with a remote scan of their
genetics – biometrics technologies are gaining increasing traction in the industry.
Indeed, Google has vowed to use the technology to kill passwords – and it wants
to do so before the end of the year. All this means that while data will be stored
securely, access will be easier than ever.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
In the cloud era, identity
management needs single sign-on
so that IT can continue to manage
the one-to-many relationship
between a user’s corporate identity
and all the other identities they
carry across the cloud in both SaaS
and mobile apps. When a user
arrives, or more importantly leaves
a job, access should be granted or
revoked immediately. And for time-
strapped IT departments, this should
be streamlined and automated,
eliminating the manual – and error-
prone – ticket processes typically used
to provision and de-provision users.
The old world of perimeter defence
is dead, now a CIO will find that
their organisation’s applications and
information are everywhere, both
inside and outside the walls of the data
centre. At its heart, modern identity
management is about understanding
and controlling the sprawl of data
and applications. For employees, it is
about having an access to an identity
that is ‘consumer simple, enterprise
secure’; an online version of themselves
that the organisation’s infrastructure
will recognise and let into the system
quickly. You know who you are, so
should your business. ¡
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