Identity Automation

Identity Automation will be exhibiting at the Texas Technology Conference on Wednesday, April 18th from 7AM to 5PM.

Be sure to drop by booth 203 and say hello!

We are excited to announce the release of ARMS 2.4.7.  This minor release includes some new configuration options as well as implements a few bug fixes.

Release Notes: https://forums.identitymgmt.net/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=178
Release Video: https://training.identitymgmt.net/doku.php?id=updates:arms-247
Download: https://forums.identitymgmt.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=62

At it’s core, Data Synchronization System (DSS) is a data management tool.  This tool helps us to tackle various use-cases, the most common being, Identity Management. In addition to IDM, we use DSS on a regular basis to build Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) Solutions as well as Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) Solutions. Another excellent use for DSS is in building Data Virtualization Solutions.

Simply put, “Data Virtualization describes the process of abstracting disparate data sources (databases, applications, file repositories, websites, data services vendors, etc.) through a single data access layer (which may be any of several data access mechanisms). This abstraction enables data access clients to target a single data access layer, serialization, format, structure, etc., rather than making each client tool handle multiples of any or all of these.”¹

Whether your applications are on-premise, in the cloud, or both, DSS can ease and automate access to your data via a meta-data construct thus enabling or facilitating the use of an organizations data in ways that are not otherwise possible for the purposes on data mining, reporting, validation, and much, much, more.

Contact Us today to find out how we can provide this solution for your organization.

Identity Automation has released the ARMS Credential Provider.  This product provides Windows Vista and Windows 7 users with a native password reset capability.  Users who can’t log into their Windows workstation can now use their ARMS challenge questions to reset their forgotten passwords.

This product is a *FREE* add-on for existing ARMS Account Management customers!

Release Video: https://training.identitymgmt.net/doku.php?id=updates:armscp-100
Download: https://forums.identitymgmt.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=62

We are excited to announce the release of DSS 2.4.0.  Below is an overview of the latest features:

- Projects: Manage projects to separate action sets, files, scheduled jobs and roles
- Files enhancements: Added copy, move, and drag-n-drop to interface
- Google Apps adapter enhancement: Manage Google Apps group ownership
- Numerous small bug fixes and usability improvements

Release Video: https://training.identitymgmt.net/doku.php?id=updates:dss-240
Download: https://forums.identitymgmt.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=63

Identity Automation will be exhibiting at CoSN 2012 in Washington DC from March 5 - March 8. Be sure to drop by POD 57 to learn more about our Identity, Data and Access management offerings.

Identity Automation has released its Federated Identity Management System (FIMS) which is a ready to use SAML Identity Provider for those who want to implement federated single sign-on without turning control of their user credentials to a third party.

Check out the product page for more information.

We will be in Booth #2049 with our Partner Condrey Corp Wed, Feb 8 through Fri, Feb 10th. Be sure to stop by and see how our ARMS and DSS products can transform the way you manage identities and access for your district.

Windows 8: Picture Password is just a toy? : For the inventor of SecurID, Windows 8’s Picture Password is nothing more than a Fisher Price toy.

Full Story

We are excited to announce the release of DSS 2.3.0.  Below is an overview of the latest features:

- New Workday adapter for integrating with the cloud-based HRMS
- New inbound SOAP listener
- New actions for AD, ARMS, GroupWise & Date
- New action category for Network actions
- New action category for System information actions
- New action category for DN manipulation actions
- New Scheduler options
- Support for specifying types on Action Set input properties
- Numerous small bug fixes and usability improvements

Release Video: https://training.identitymgmt.net/doku.php?id=updates:dss-230
Download: https://forums.identitymgmt.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=63

We are excited to announce the release of ARMS 2.4.0.  Below is an overview of the latest features:

• Web SSO: Application Access now supports form fill single sign on in addition to the existing SAML2 based application single sign on abilities
• Attribute Encryption: New custom attribute type (Password) encrypts sensitive attribute values.  This type allows encrypted storage in the directory for things like storing passwords for Web SSO.
• Reporting Module: New Reporting Module that shows graphs of activity within the system and provides return on investment information
• Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements

Release Video: https://training.identitymgmt.net/doku.php?id=updates:arms-240
Download: https://forums.identitymgmt.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=62

ARMS 2.3.0 feature and improvement highlights:

• Improved Group importing and syncing
• Improved Group Management user interface speed for organizations with a large number of groups
• New Group Management attribute map allows custom group attributes to be set and managed via the group management tools
• Sponsorship account expiration can now be set as optional for new accounts
• Improved Workflow reattestation searching
• Admins can now set a redirect url to use after a user completes the forgot my password process
• Claim My Account now prompts users to setup their challenge questions if applicable

Many of our customers are implementing or considering the implementation of hosted application services (aka SaaS).  The benefits are obvious because your support burden is reduced whether that be due to increased resource utilization, hardware savings, software savings or otherwise. 

For the sake of this article, let’s use the example of implementing hosted email services by Google.  Google Apps is a great solution for commercial, non-profit and public organizations.  The Google infrastructure is better than most organizations could provide themselves.  Your internal customers have 24/7 access to their email, calendar, docs and other services provided by the Google Apps offering.  As an IT department, you no longer maintain your email infrastructure.  You no longer have to keep internal resources trained on your email system and you can now take back those resources that were dedicated to supporting email and reassign them to other projects.  All of this is great and seems like a no-brainer for many organizations.

The truth is, you do still have some management burden.  Even though you don’t support a local email system, you still are responsible for setting up and managing your user accounts for Google Apps.  You will still get the call when users can’t access Google Apps because they don’t have an account, they are disabled or they don’t recall their password.  Many IT departments are disappointed to see the lack of tools available to automate this process.  Google does provide a directory synchronization tool but it isn’t perfect.  Password management is an all together different issue.  Although this isn’t the basis for this article, it is worth noting that Identity Automation has a Google Adapter for DSS the can fully automate the management of users and groups in Google.  This solution absolutely deals with much of the pain associated with managing Google Apps accounts, but I digress.  The point of this article is to specifically discuss passwords regarding hosted services.

Back to our Google Apps example, our adapter is capable of taking passwords from your internal directory service and synchronizing those to the matching Google Apps account.  This is a great solution but it can raise security concerns.  Google hosts their Google Apps in a high security facility.  Their employees are well vetted.  That doesn’t mean every hosted services provider goes through the same pains regarding security.  The alternative?  SAML!

Many hosted services providers support SAML for authentication.  Google Apps, Salesforce.com, Zendesk and Zoho to name a few.  A system that supports SAML as a means for authentication is referred to as a Service Provider (SP).  An SP requires the availability of an Identity Provider (IdP).  When a user accesses Google Apps (with SAML configured), they will not authenticate directly against the Google servers.  Instead the SP (Google in this case) will refer the user’s browser to the IdP.  Our ARMS and/or DSS products both act as an IdP.  The IdP is configured to authenticate users against your internal directory service such as Active Directory.  That means when a user accesses Google, to a redirected to your ARMS (or DSS) appliance where they will log in with their network credentials.  The same credentials they use to log into their office workstations.  Once authenticated, the IdP passes a secure token that tells the SP that you successfully authenticated and informs the SP who you are in its system.

SAML is important to your organization as you move more towards relying on hosted services.  Without SAML you are storing credentials in an untrusted environment.  You don’t always know how those credentials are stored and secured.  A user’s credentials in these systems likely match the same credentials used for in internal systems.  If the passwords in the hosted system are stored in an insecure fashion you’ve basically exposed access to internal systems as well.  With SAML, there is no credential stored in the hosted service providers facility.  There is zero risk of credentials being exposed and stolen.

By combining our Google Apps Adapter for DSS and ARMS with the SAML IdP service, you now have a viable option fully automating the management of accounts and providing secure SSO without the risk of storing user credentials “in the cloud”. 

Contact Us today to find out how we can provide this solution for your organization for Google Apps or other hosted services solutions.

** Bugs Fixed
  * Debug message being displayed when session token expires
  * ARMS Forgotten username/password have bad links for css reset styles
  * Deep linking doesn’t work correctly
  * ACTM non My Delegations should not allow setting of challenge questions but instead expire them.
  * Forgotten Password application shows raw html for password policy
  * GMM: ‘Modified By:’ is blank
  * Error when making the getDSSIntegrationConfig API call
  * Workflow forms do not show up
  * Forgot my password needs to check for invalid challenge set error
  * Altentry authentication error message not displayed correctly
  * Group Configuration sometimes shows blank values when values do exist in the database

** Improvement
  * GMM: Only keep last 10 sync history items for each group

** New Feature
  * Enable/disable each email template
  * Add export button to export data as csv for all tabs
  * ACTM: Claim My Account

** Task
  * Modify session timeout default value from 1 hour to 8 hours

https://support.identitymgmt.net/index.php?/News/NewsItem/View/34/arms-220-now-available

Identity Automation is presenting and exhibiting at this week’s Tennessee Educational Technology Association.

Be sure to stop by our booth and see us!

http://www.teta.org/

DSS 2.1.0 is now available.

** New Feature
  * [DSS-208] - SAML Support for DSS

** Improvement
  * [DSS-210] - Changes to allow DB adapter to work with additional databases
  * [DSS-211] - Improved profile and contact support

This brochure describes what makes our products unique.

View Brochure      Download Brochure

Not a day goes by that we don’t have a conversation with a customer about some service they want to connect to that exists in the “cloud”.  There are numerous ways to handle the authentication for those services and there is increasing interest in the use of SAML for this purpose.

If you’re not familiar with SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0), it’s a “standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains. SAML 2.0 is an XML-based protocol that uses security tokens containing assertions to pass information about a principal (usually an end-user) between an identity provider and a web service. SAML 2.0 enables web-based authentication and authorization scenarios including single sign-on (SSO).” ¹

One of the big questions when considering the use of SAML is who are you going to trust to be your SAML provider?  As we hear of more security “incidents”, organizations that we talk to are questioning the wisdom of allowing someone else to host their credential data and are interested in being their own SAML provider. With the upcoming release of ARMS 2.1.0 you will now be able to be your own SAML provider and able to direct applications that can leverage SAML for authentication, such as Salesforce.com, Google Apps, Zendesk, etc, to your system for authentication.

If you want to learn how you can implement your own SAML Authentication Provider, please contact our Sales Team today!

Identity Automation will showcase the implementation of its products at Greenville ISD in Tennessee at the TETA Summer Institute Event on July 12-15, 2011 in Anderson County TN.

Identity Automation is Exhibiting at the 2011 Microsoft TechEd Conference in Atlanta, Georgia from May 16-19, 2011.

Be sure to stop by booth 1711 to learn more about our offerings.

Patches for DSS 1.5.x adapters are now available.

• Google Apps Adapter 1.5.3
• ARMS Adapter 1.5.3
• Live@EDU and Exchange Agents 1.5.3

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Identity Automation will participate in the 11th Annual DIR Information Security Forum with our Partner Dyonyx, LP.

When: April 20, 2011
Where: Austin, Texas

We have entered into our 2.0 Product testing are are targeting the release of ARMS 2.0 and DSS 2.0 on May 6, 2011.  Both products will be packed with new features.  Following is a partial list:

• New Core Actions
  • Exchange
  • Live@EDU
  • Arrays
  • Crypto
  • Date/Time
  • Encode/Decode
  • Logging
  • Port Forwarding
  • Telephony
• UI Enhancements
• Agent Support

• Localization
• Easier Installation/Upgrade
• Resizable details panel/datagrids
• Growl like notifications
• UI Log Viewer
• idauto-apps: audit log viewer
• View Running Jobs
• List type attributes are rendered with their display value instead of their value
• Global attribute map
• LDAP attribute drop down (no longer have to type attribute names)
• No more module versions, just a global ARMS version
• Forgot my password now integrated into main arms.war
• Standardizing on using idautoID
• Messages on Success from DSS
• Expressions now use friendly names instead of ldap attribute names, ie %[First Name]% instead of %givenName%
• New Global User Configuration for display attributes
• New Global Group Configuration for display attributes

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

As school districts across the United States grapple with budget shortfalls, these same organizations face increased expectations for services to staff, students and parents.

Over the past three to five years we have seen an increase in the need for Identity Lifecycle Management needs for all district staff and we have been actively engaged with districts all across the US to implement solutions that facilitate the fulfillment of this need without creating a bottleneck in IT and minimizing the impact to the IT organization.  As districts step out to provide services to students, the need for automation becomes increasingly important due to the sheer number of accounts that must be managed.  Adding parents to the list of users makes the task of automated account management absolutely paramount.  We have also found that it is just as important to provide facilities for users to manage their accounts (e.g. password recovery, user association, etc) so the users are able to achieve their goals as quickly as possible without having to rely on Helpdesk or other staff to manage their accounts for them.

Our Data Synchronization System and Access Request Management System are the most cost effective tools on the market today that achieve these goals without adversely impacting your budget.

If you want to learn how you can implement a fully automated Identity Lifecycle Management system in these lean times so you are able to meet the demands of your customers yet do so at a very reasonable cost, please contact our Sales Team today!

Identity Automation establishes a partnership with Workday to provide complete Identity Management capabilities with the DSS Workday Adapter.

It is now possible to automatically provision, de-provision and manage other aspects of your user accounts based on changes in Workday.

For more information about Workday, visit www.workday.com.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Identity Automation continues to expand its “out of the box” data management capabilities with the release of its EDI DSS adapter.

Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the structured electronic transmission of data between systems.

Identity Automation’s Data Synchronization System (DSS) EDI Adapter is capable of reading and validating EDI X12 transaction files as well as translating those transaction sets to XML or other formats for importing into your business systems.  The DSS EDI Adapter is also capable of converting EDI files to different X12 versions (such as converting from version 4010 to 5010).

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

This brochure describes our Hosted KeepnTrack Record Synchronization offering.

View Brochure      Download Brochure

This brochure describes our Hosted Live@edu Account Lifecycle Management offering.

View Brochure      Download Brochure

Protection of your organization’s data assets is critical to ensuring your competitive edge as well as to fulfilling your fiduciary responsibility.  Failure to implement systems to guarantee the enforcement of company policies for data access can cause serious legal troubles and shake the confidence of your customers.

Following is a recent story that documents how a terminated employee still has access to his former employer’s computers systems months after his departure.

New Zealand Herald - Telecom’s customer data open to ex staff

Identity Automation’s Identity, Data and Access Management solutions can ensure that your organization enforces best practices to mitigate these types of risks.

For more information, contact our Sales Team today!

Want to stay in touch with what’s going on at Identity Automation?  Facebook and Twitter make it EASY!

We recently created a Facebook page and a Twitter account and are now on a quest to increase our following. We would love to have you be a part of our online family so clink one of the links below to like/follow us on your favorite social networking site.

Like us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Identity Automation will be at the Texas Computer Education Association Conference (TCEA), Feb 9-11, 2011 in Austin, Texas!

We will be partnering with Stoneware on Wed, Feb 9, 2011 and with Condrey Corp on Feb 10-11, 2011.

Be sure to stop by the Stoneware booth (#523) on the 9th and the Condrey Corp booth (#2630) on the 10-11 to talk about your Identity, Data and Access Management needs!

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Identity Automation’s Identity, Data and Access Management Software (DSS / ARMS) is making its way into shops of all types and sizes.  As we start 2011, we want to make it easy for you to become a part of the Identity Automation software alumni by offering you some promotions that you don’t want to miss!

Competitive IDM Upgrade
Already running an Identity Management solution? Are you satisfied that the solution is providing you the best value possible? Is your solution too complex for you to manage?  If you answered yes to one or more of these questions then Identity Automation has an offer for you!

Learn more about our Competitive Upgrade promotion.

Hosted Live@EDU
Live@EDU is HOT!  Many organizations want to use the solution but are concerned with how they will manage all of the accounts.  Identity Automation is offering a low flat rate cost that makes the decision to move froward with Live@EDU a no-brainer!

Learn more about our Live@EDU promotion.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

DSS CLI Adapter - Demo from Identity Automation.

DSS LDAP Adapter - Demo from Identity Automation.

DSS CLI Adapter - Demo from Identity Automation.

In this video you will learn how to build your own, simple Jasper Report output using DSS.  We will query LDAP for a list of users and then place the data into our report.

DSS is now shipped with Jasper Reports.  There is a new “Reports” add-on that is licensed separately and is required to build these reports.

In the video I’m using iReport to build the report definition.  This is a free tool that helps build the Jasper Report definition file (.jrxml).

Identity Automation’s CEO, James Litton, was recently interviewed by the Houston Business Journal regarding IT Security.  Following is Mr. Litton’s quote:

“The biggest challenge when it comes to IT security is lack of effective controls for who has access to what and when.  Most organizations have good policies in place but those policies require human beings to follow them and implement them.  Most IT departments have their hands full with day-to-day support duties and projects and policy adherence suffers.  Every week we hear a story of how a business or school or government agency was compromised and sensitive data fell into the wrong hands.  If these problems are to be mitigated it is imperative that automated Identity and Access Management solutions be implemented to reduce risk.  With such a system in place it now becomes possible to automatically enforce policies around data access, segregation of duties, account / access terminations, password complexity, location access and many other risk mitigating policies.  These solutions also make it possible to effectively control access to super-user accounts which, combined with an effective workflow system, know exactly who had access to what and when so that risk can be mitigated upfront but also be able to better chase down a perpetrator if a compromise does indeed occur.

With our ever increasing technology dependence and with that technology growing in complexity at exponential rates, no organization can claim that they are taking security seriously if they do not have fully automated Identity and Access controls in place to ensure compliance and reduce risk.”

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Recently I was reviewing some provisioning statistics for one of our customers using our ARMS and DSS products.  I see these statistics on a daily basis because we build that into all of our IDM solutions.  This week I took a minute more to really look at the numbers and put them in perspective.  Here are the statistics for student provisioning at this customer site for a 24-hour period:

Now these numbers are only a subset of the total transactions that are automated or delegated outside of the IT department using our products.  For example, these numbers don’t include staff provisioning transactions or password resets.

With that in mind, how many staff would be required to deal with this many transactions on a DAILY basis?  The reality is that each transaction, when done manually, takes quite a bit of time.  It requires time to request the change, review the change, implement the change, validate the change and communicate the change.  To put a number to that, let’s say each transaction requires a total person effort of 10 minutes.  Using the numbers above, that totals 19,190 minutes (or 319 hours or 40 days)!!

The reality is no organization can handle that load from a resource perspective.  The obvious deduction then is that these transactions just aren’t occurring without “full” automation.  By that I mean an automated solution that deals with all of these transactions, not just one or two transactions.  That means many accounts are not getting created, updated, moved, disabled, etc. either in a timely manner or at all.

Another way to look at the value is to put a cost to each transaction.  How much does is cost an organization to deal with these transactions manually?  Research firms often use $25 as a per transaction cost.  This includes factors such as the salaries, benefits, lost work, etc.  Using our transaction numbers above, the daily cost for handling every transaction would be $47,975/day or a whopping $12,473,500/year!!

Now, I’m not saying you’ll save $12 million a year by automating your account management.  The point is that automation is absolutely a great value for any organization.  Again, this is only one piece of the IDM puzzle.  This doesn’t cover other features offered by our ARMS and DSS products to provide delegated administration, group membership automation, contingent worker management and workflow.  It also doesn’t cover the audit and compliance benefits that are gained by keeping track of all events related to identity.

I sent an email to the customer who’s numbers are reflected above.  Here’s the response:

“Incredible. I did not think we had that much volume.  A very effective investment!”

The reality is that most organizations don’t have a baseline for how many identity-type transactions they manage on a daily basis.  That is usually not realized until after the automated solution is put into place (assuming the solution tracks those statistics).  Every organization is different.  The volume of transactions is also going to be different.  Regardless, identity management is important to all organizations. The primary benefit for each organization could be costs savings, reducing errors, compliance, improved customer satisfaction or some other factor.  All of these are valid and the reality is that all of them are achieved every time we implement our products.

For more information about our solutions, contact our Sales Team today!

Identity Automation and COMPanion Corp have secured new school district customers in Maine and New Mexico.

Both customers will be leveraging Identity Automation’s cloud based data integration services to automatically share data between their internal systems and Companion Corp’s KeepnTrack system.

By leveraging Identity Automation’s solution these customers are able to increase the effectiveness of their investments in KeepnTrack while limiting the administrative impact on their staff.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

The list of regulatory and other mandates that require some level of Identity Management is ever growing. Having a documented process and then relying on people to follow those processes is not enough to ensure compliance to these mandates. The only real solution to mitigate process breach is to implement systems to guarantee access controls.

If your organization is subject to CFATS, SOX, HIPPA, FISMA, FERPA, PCI or any other mandate that requires auditable access controls then the implementation of an Identity Management and Workflow system are imperative to ensuring compliance.  That being said, all IDM and Workflow solutions are not the same!  Before making a technology choice, be sure that the solution you choose is easy to use and does not overly burden your staff or create bottlenecks and roadblocks that could hinder productivity.

Identity Automation has years of experience implementing solutions to fully manage the Identity Lifecycle within computing systems across the enterprise and are experts at access control and workflow which are at the heart of effective implementations of these systems.

For more information, contact our Sales Team today!

Secaucus, New Jersey, November 15, 2010 – Many companies uses various software applications for management. OrangeHRM, a global leader is open source Human Resource management software and Identity Automation, a leading Identity, Data and Access management solution provider announced a strategic alliance to leverage OrangeHRM as an authoritative source to provision / de-provision user accounts and share other data elements with downstream systems in the Enterprise.

Identity Automation and OrangeHRM will work with a few targeted clients during the first quarter of 2011, to implement the following:

• Automatically provision Active Directory Accounts when an employee is added to OrangeHRM
• Automatically de-provision a Active Directory Accounts when an employee is terminated in OrangeHRM
• Ensure that changed employee data (e.g. name, department, title) automatically flows down to connected systems (Sugar, SalesForce.com, etc.)
• Automatically create accounts for employees in other systems used by the company such as Google Apps, SalesForce.com, etc.

Identity Automation CEO James Litton said, “We can leverage OrangeHRM to automatically manage accounts and their access in other on-premise our cloud based systems such as Google Apps, Microsoft Exchange, or any other system used by your organization.”

Sujee Saparamdu, Co-Founder and CEO of OrangeHRM said, “Our goal is to Integrate other software systems with OrangeHRM with the help of an ARMS (Access Request Management System) and make data assets that reside in various repositories more usable to our users. This will immensely help organizations to make accurate strategic decisions.”

According to research made by OrangeHRM and Identity has revealed the importance and demand for a solution of this nature. The OrangeHRM Marketing Team states a large number of clients have requested the kind of solution that this alliance will bring to the market.

About OrangeHRM
OrangeHRM Inc., located in Secaucus, NJ, is a highly flexible, emerging organization that specializes in affordable Human Resources Management (HRM), also known as Human Capital Management (HCM) for SME’s. The open source OrangeHRM product suite includes an array of modules that provide personal information management (PIM), employee self-service (ESS), leave management, time and attendance tracking (PTO), performance evaluation and recruitment, all at no cost. OrangeHRM has been downloaded more than 450,000 times and has more than 1,000,000 users making it the leading open source HRIS in the world.  OrangeHRM also offers a subscription-based, hosted service that eliminates the need for installing and maintaining the product internally.

About Identity Automation
Identity Automation, LP delivers identity management, application integration and data integration solutions that address the problems of cost and complexity associated with manual account lifecycle management processes and with connecting on-premise and cloud based applications and data.

Privately held, Identity Automation is headquartered in Houston, Texas. To learn more about Identity Automation’s identity management, application integration and data integration solutions, visit www.identityautomation.com.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Identity Automation is pleased to announce the release of its DSS adapter for Sharepoint. 

Even though Sharepoint fully integrates with Active Directory, it is still necessary to manage users and groups within Sharepoint itself. With the Identity Automation DSS Adapter for Sharpoint, this task can now be fully automated thus simplifying management of your Sahrepoint Environment.

For more information on DSS adapter for Microsoft Sharepoint, please submit your contact information and one of our sales representatives we will contact you.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Identity Automation is pleased to announce the release of its Exchange Agent and DSS adapter for Exchange. 

With the Identity Automation Exchange Agent, it is now possible to fully manage Users and Groups via web services calls.  The DSS Adapter for Exchange makes full use of the Agent and makes User and Group management easier than ever before.

For more information on DSS adapter for Microsoft Exchange, please submit your contact information and one of our sales representatives we will contact you.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

As we have the privilege of talking to customers about their Identity Management needs, one of the requests that comes up over and over again is around the delegation of Account Management. 

There are many use cases where delegation makes sense. One that we run into daily is the need for teachers to be able to unlock accounts or reset passwords for students. Allowing this capability to flow to the teacher level greatly improves user experience, ensures immediate resolution to the user’s problem while freeing IT up to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Another use case is giving managers the ability to reset passwords for employees.  Just like the example above, delegating this responsibility improves user experience while shifting the responsibility to those closest to the challenge.

If you need a solution that requires a some level of delegated account administration with complete audit capabilities, give us a shout and let us see how we can help.

IDM Overview from Identity Automation.

We work with organizations every day that consume a number of their services from “the cloud”.  For many commercial and government customers these are services like Google Apps or Zendesk.  For education customers, we see a lot of Live@EDU, Google Apps and Raptor V-Soft but the list of service providers is endless.

We all know that managing identity and access within our internal systems is challenging enough and the idea of extending this to cloud based services can be the cause of a lot of concern.

One way to deal with this is to implement an on premise Identity Management solution using tools such as our Data Synchronization System (DSS) and Access Request Management System (ARMS). Another option is to leverage our hosted solutions for synchronization, which we offer for systems such as Zendesk, KeepnTrack, Google Apps, Live@EDU and Raptor V-Soft.

Taking this approach means quick implementation, reduced burden on IT staff, increased service-levels and fast ROI.

If you would like to learn more about our hosted and on premise Identity, Data and Access Management solutions please contact us today.

Identity Automation is pleased to announce the release of its Web Services Server for Microsoft .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

The standard method for automating tasks for Live@EDU such as querying, creating, updating and deleting user mailboxes, distribution groups, and contacts is via Powershell.  While this method is functional, it lacks the ease of integration and robustness of other methods such as web services.

With the Identity Automation Web Services Server for Microsoft Live@EDU, it is now possible to interact with Live@EDU via REST Web Services which makes it possible to interact via any system that is capable of making web services calls.  This method also provides significantly greater scalability by greatly enhancing session management with .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

For more information on DSS systems integration adapter for Live@EDU, please submit your contact information and one of our sales representatives we will contact you.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

This video demonstrates how Role-Based Provisioning can be accomplished with ARMS & DSS.

ARMS Sponsorship - Demo from Identity Automation.

Company Overview from Identity Automation.

This video demonstrates the ARMS Sponsorship Module.

ARMS Sponsorship - Demo from Identity Automation.

Identity Automation is pleased to announce the release of its DSS systems integration adapter for Microsoft Live@EDU.

This adapter allows a connection to a Live@EDU Institution for the purpose of querying, creating, updating and deleting user mailboxes, distribution groups, and contacts.

This capability makes it possible to automatically populate your Live@EDU Institution with your staff and student information thus saving countless man-hours and eliminating errors caused by manual record creations.  The adapter supports automatic record updates into Live@EDU which handles new employee, student and contractor additions, removals and profile updates based on information from your authoritative systems such as your HR system, Student Information system, etc.

In addition to automatic account creations, the adapter also supports full lifecycle management of accounts and groups including terminations, memberships changes, password resets, etc.

For more information on DSS systems integration adapter for Live@EDU, please submit your contact information and one of our sales representatives we will contact you.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Delegated account management and sponsorship responsibilities provided by an effective Identity Management(IDM) solution give technology staffs the flexibility to oversee multiple locations from a single office, while still allowing each location day to day management and control of local IT resources.

View Whitepaper      Download Whitepaper

This brochure describes using our Data Synchronization System (DSS) to cleanse and manage your data assets.

View Brochure      Download Brochure

This video demonstrates the ARMS Account Management Module.

ARMS Account Management - Demo from Identity Automation.

Identity Automation is pleased to announce the release of its ARMS Group Management Module.

The ARMS Group Management Module is part of the Identity Automation suite of tools called Access Request Management System (ARMS).  ARMS Group Management allows for full delegation of group management in Active Directory and eDirectory environments.  This capability removes the burden of managing access groups and distribution lists and shifts the responsibility to group / function owners who are better equipped to make decisions regarding membership and access.

To learn more, check out the ARMS Group Management Product Page.

For more information on the ARMS Group Management Module, please submit your contact information and one of our sales representatives we will contact you.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

This brochure describes our Access Request Management System (ARMS) Account Management Module.

View Brochure      Download Brochure

Identity Automation is featured on Today in America, a television series that informs viewers on a variety of topics, trends and relevant issues impacting the United States and the world.

View Program

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

When we did a review of ARMS/DSS, we were impressed with the flexibility of the system, the speed of implementation, the easy to use management interface, and the amount of delegated administration it supported.

Identity Automation is featured in Today in America, a television series that informs viewers on a variety of topics, trends and relevant issues impacting our nation and the world. The show airs on Fox, CNN, ION and other cable channels.

Today in America from Identity Automation.

I have been around Information Technology for 20 years and managing Privileged User Access has always been a challenge.

Different organizations handle this issue in different ways.  Some choose to share the password for super user accounts (root / administrator) with folks across the IT department so work can be done without hindrance.  The problem with this approach is you can’t tell who did what since the logs don’t actually reveal who the account user was.  There is also the issue around password changes for these accounts which oftentimes never occurs because communication of those changes is too painful.  Other organizations come at the problem from another perspective.  Rather than sharing the password for the super user account, they instead, perpetually elevate certain users to a super user status.  This approach is better since activity is now logged at the user level but having too many users with such highly elevated privileges is not a best practice and depending on your organizations account management process could leave the organization at risk if one of these users is terminated.

A far better approach is to grant access to super user privileges only when it’s required and for a limited period of time.  Identity Automation’s ARMS Workflow system provides a way of doing exactly that.  Implementation can be as unique as the organization; following are some examples.

• Create a workflow request that allows members of a certain group to be automatically granted super user status for a limited duration of time upon initiating their request.  After the prescribed amount of time has elapsed, super user access will automatically be revoked.
• Create a workflow that allows members of IT to request super user access but require approval from an IT manager or Director before access is granted. After a certain amount of time, the access would be automatically revoked.
• Create a workflow that allows certain members of IT to “check out” the Administrator account so they can perform certain administrative functions.  After a prescribed period of time the Administrator account password is automatically changed and the Administrator “assignment status” is reset.

The possible implementation scenarios are endless but the important thing is to have a viable solution in-place that ACTUALLY works and limits risk to the organization, is scalable and is fully auditable.

For more information on how you can use ARMS Workflow to manage Privileged User Access, please submit your contact information and one of our sales representatives will contact you.

BELO Corp.‘s (NYSE:BLC) implementation of Identity Automation’s ARMS and DSS solutions for identity management has allowed their IT staff to manage a nationwide network efficiently and effectively by distributing system responsibilities, while maintaining central oversight.

View Story      Download Story

This brochure describes using our Data Synchronization System (DSS) to drive an Identity Management Solution.

View Brochure      Download Brochure

Why a unified web information portal is becoming a requirement for educators who desire to keep parents connected, informed and involved in the education of their children.

View Whitepaper      Download Whitepaper

This brochure describes using our Data Synchronization System (DSS) to drive an Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) Solution.

View Brochure      Download Brochure

Identity Automation is pleased to announce the release of its DSS systems integration adapter for Google Apps.

This adapter allows a connection to a Google Apps Organization for the purpose of querying, creating, updating and deleting user accounts and groups.

This capability makes it possible to automatically populate your Google Apps Organization with your staff and student information thus saving countless man-hours and eliminating errors caused by manual record creations.  The adapter supports automatic record updates into Google Apps which handles new employee, student and contractor additions, removals and profile updates based on information from your authoritative systems such as your HR system, Student Information system, etc.

In addition to automatic account creations, the adapter also supports full lifecycle management of accounts and groups including terminations, memberships changes, password resets, etc.

For more information on DSS systems integration adapter for Google Apps, please submit your contact information and one of our sales representatives we will contact you.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Identity Automation is pleased to announce the release of its DSS systems integration adapter for KeepnTrack.

This adapter allows a connection to the KeepnTrack application for the purpose of querying, creating, updating and deleting person and facility records. 

The capability makes it possible to automatically populate the KeepnTrack system with your staff and student information thus saving countless man-hours and eliminating errors caused by manual record creations.  The adapter supports automatic record updates into KeepnTrack which handles new employee, student and contractor additions, removals and profile updates based on information from your authoritative systems such as your HR system, Student Information system, etc.

The adapter also supports the movement of data from KeepnTrack into other systems.  A good example of this is using KeepnTrack to automatically and instantly provision visitor accounts (for network access or any other system access) for vendors, volunteers, temporary staff, etc.  This reduces burden on the IT staff, increases services-levels, reduces risk and ensures auditability of access.

These are just a few examples of the capability that the new Identity Automation DSS Adapter for KeepnTrack provides.

For more information on DSS systems integration adapter for KeepnTrack, please submit your contact information and one of our sales representatives we will contact you.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Identity Automation is pleased to announce the release of its DSS systems integration adapter for Zendesk.

This adapter facilitates fully automated identity lifecycle management and access control for your users within Zendesk from the authoritative system(s) of your choice. 

This capability makes it possible to automatically create Zendesk accounts for your staff and customers based on a feed from an HR system, Active Directory group membership, Identity Automation ARMS Sponsorship Module or any other system that provides a means for external data exchange. 

Leveraging the Identity Automation Zendesk DSS Adapter eliminates the need to manually create and manage Zendesk accounts and ensures that accounts are created and deleted in a timely manner. This reduces burden on the IT staff, increases services-levels, reduces risk and ensures auditability of access.

These are just a few examples of the capability that the new Identity Automation DSS Adapter for Zendesk provides.

For more information on DSS systems integration adapter for Zendesk, please submit your contact information and one of our sales representatives we will contact you.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

This brochure describes our Access Request Management System (ARMS) Sponsorship Module.

View Brochure      Download Brochure

Looking to move to a current, stable, and supported identity management (IDM) environment, a major research University in Kansas, recently leveraged Identity Automation’s RAPiDiDENTiTY methodology to implement a complete IDM solution.

Success Story

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District (ISD) understands that the biggest aid to the success of their students, outside of the skilled and dedicated district faculty, is the close involvement of parents in the education of their children.

View Story      Download Story

This brochure describes our Access Request Management System (ARMS) Workflow Module.

View Brochure      Download Brochure

This brochure describes using our Data Synchronization System (DSS) to drive an Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) Solution.

View Brochure      Download Brochure

Taking on a new solution, even one designed to lower costs, manage growing complexities, and mitigate ongoing risks, always carries a cost of ownership.  This is seen in software maintenance costs, often times an increased server footprint, and even in continued staff training and keeping their skill sets current on the technology.  More and more, we have to look beyond the benefit of the solution to the organization, and weigh carefully the total costs of owning the solution.

We consider all information technology assets and solutions moving in the direction of “the cloud.”  Organizations want to capitalize IT, and remove it from their overhead as much as possible. To do this organizations are looking more and more at hosted solutions, software-as-a-service vendors, and outsourced IT.

A couple of years ago, there was no strategy to deliver Identity Management Solutions in any way other than a significant server footprint on-site, typically occupying multiple servers (physical and VM) with high availability and fail-over.  This data center growth to accommodate the solution impinged on any immediate ROI, and made the solution more costly to manage in the long term. 

With our shift in strategy we fully embrace the new hosted and service oriented delivery of identity management, giving our customers a turn-key identity management solution without the need to parse out data center space, or to keep their staff resources concerned with new technology.  Identity management for our customers is now a service that is out of the day to day concern, and provides automated provisioning and workflow management through a simple web-UI that is both intuitive and clean.  As customer needs shift, or changes are required to the solution to accommodate internal policy, we manage the solution to bring it into alignment.

This strategy is proven to lower TCO, and allows our customers to achieve a real ROI in a fraction of the time of a traditional IDM deployment.

For more information on how our solutions can help lower your TCO, please submit your contact information and one of our sales representatives will contact you.

Identity Automation’s CEO, James Litton, was quoted in an article entitled “Improving User Passwords - Create An Uncrackable Password To Keep Intruders Off Your System” in the July 2, 2010 Issue (Vol 32 Nbr 14) of Processor Magazine.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

VB/Research, who covers, the “Global Security (IT & Homeland) sector” has just published an article about Identity Automation.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Identity Automation was instrumental in helping our organization implement a “best practice” approach to managing our data.  Using their DSS we now have a centralized way to manage data extraction form our systems.  We are also using the product to consolidate data into a data warehouse that we use for all internal reporting.

Their staff was knowledgeable and professional and very easy to work with.

The strength of user passwords sets the bar for the strength of an organization’s defenses against “bad guys” gaining access to valuable organizational resources.  For that reason alone, it is of paramount importance that a best practice password policy is implemented and enforced.

Following are a few guidelines to consider when thinking about password and access policy for your organization:

• Require STRONG passwords and enforce their use with technology.  Educate your users so they understand that strong doesn’t have to mean difficult.  Encourage them to use words that mean something to them (but not the names of family or pets) and use a technique of replacing certain letters with symbols or numbers so the user can, more easily, remember the password.  Mixing case is also important.  The key is to find a technique and always use that technique.  An example might be to always capitalize the first letter and last letter of the word, use “@” instead of “a” and “0” instead of “o”  (e.g. P@ssw0rD)
• Treat your passwords like you treat your underwear; change them often and don’t leave them lying around.  REQUIRE regular change.  There is plenty of debate around the effectiveness of requiring regular password changes but requiring changes every 90 to 120 days, in theory, should result in a more secure environment.  The best example of why this might be effective is that a change thwarts the “bad guy” in a situation where an account has been compromised and is being used to snoop and steal data.
• Bigger IS better.  The longer the password, the likelihood that it can be cracked is significantly reduced.  A minimum of eight characters is best practice but if you can get away with it push for strings in excess of 10 characters.
• Implement a synchronization system so that a password change in one place (e.g. Active Directory) is captured and pushed to all other systems within the organization.  This improves user satisfaction and increases security by ensuring that passwords are changed on a regular basis in all systems, even if some of those systems are infrequently logged into by their users.
• Require two-factor authentication when accessing very sensitive data or when accessing data from off-site.  Two-factor does NOT have to equal expensive.  There are USB solutions, for example, that can be implemented and are just as effective as more expensive options.  This combined with an effective password strategy can greatly increase security because now it’s more than what you know, what you have becomes just as important.
• Educate, Educate, Educate!  Make sure your user community understands that their passwords are the organization’s primary defense against valuable data loss.  Passwords should never be written down nor should the password ever be a word that can be found in the dictionary (see bullet one). Users should be trained to notify the IT department (or the security team, if one exists) if they suspect that their account has been compromised.  Don’t forget the help-desk team either.  Help-desk staff should be educated to avoid social-engineering techniques that are used every single day to acquire passwords by “tricking” support staff into resetting an account’s password and sharing that password with someone other than the account owner.

For more information on implementing effective password and access policies and automated mechanisms to manage them, please submit your contact information and one of our sales representatives will contact you.

This brochure provides an overview of Identity Automation and our products and services.

View Brochure      Download Brochure

Join Identity Automation for a discussion on Total Data Management using Data Synchronization System (DSS) and Access Request Management System (ARMS).

This session will review details regarding school district implementations across the US and how those districts are using DSS and ARMS to effectively and affordably manage their internal data assets to improve business processes while lowering risk.

When: June 10, 2010 - 11am PT/1pm CT/2pm ET

Where: Online via GoToMeeting

Who: Identity Automation will present

Register: Call 281-220-0021

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Identity Automation releases its Account Management module for ARMS.

HOUSTON—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Identity Automation, LP announces the release of the Account Management module for its Access Request Management System (ARMS).  ARMS is part of the company’s world class data management solution.

The Account Management module focuses on user identities by providing self-service and delegated administration functionality that allows end users to view and edit their profile, change their password and reset their forgotten password.  The company also provides a mobile accessible interface that works with Blackberry, Android , iPhone and Windows Mobile.

Administrators can use the module to reset passwords, reset challenge questions and unlock accounts.  The ARMS Account Management module also provides a custom delegation definition capability as well.  Administrators define custom delegations to allow a specified group of users to take actions upon a specified target group of users.  One popular use case is to delegate password reset privileges to teachers so they can reset password for students at the same campus where they teach.  Another common example is to set up managers to reset passwords for their direct reports.

The ARMS Account Management module is in addition to the already available Sponsorship (lifecycle management of contingent workers) and Workflow (resource request and approval) modules.  The Access Request Management System is supported in Microsoft Active Directory and Novell eDirectory environments.

Identity Automation, LP delivers identity management, application integration and data integration solutions that address the problems of cost and complexity associated with manual account lifecycle management processes and with connecting on-premise and cloud based applications and data.

Privately held, Identity Automation is headquartered in Houston, Texas. To learn more about Identity Automation’s identity management, application integration and data integration solutions, visit www.identityautomation.com.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

While working with our customers, we are regularly surprised to find so little continuity in the way that many organizations handle their data integration. 

Usually these conversations arise because a customer needs a way to feed existing data into another system.  As you can imagine, this is a very common scenario.  What’s surprising, however, is how often the movement of this data is done in an ad-hoc fashion.  This ad-hoc approach results in all types of uncontrolled data extractions with equally uncontrolled data hand-offs. 

By “uncontrolled” I mean that these scripts that are used to extract data are rarely managed in a centralized fashion.  As time goes on administrators leave the organization and relationships with partner organizations (with whom you were sharing data) are terminated, yet the scripts are forgotten and continue to run.

An approach that we take with our customers is to centralize all data management using our Data Synchronization System.  This allows all data extraction, data transformation and data insertion functions to reside in a central location so they can be properly managed. With this approach, administrators can see all the scripts that touch their data sources and regularly validate their place in the environment.  This is a much better model and one that can significantly lower risk to the organization.

In this world of ever increasing risk of being in violation of a compliance requirement or an embarrassing incident due to uncontrolled data access, it is of paramount importance to take all necessary steps to control data extracts.

If you are unsure of your risk, call Identity Automation today to learn more about our Data Security Assessments.

If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and will contact you as quickly as possible.

Higher education’s high user turnover and user complexity demands an efficient solution for generation, upkeep, and deprovisioning of identities within its IT infrastructure.

View Whitepaper      Download Whitepaper

Identity Automation’s DSS now supports two-way password synchronization with Active Directory

HOUSTON—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Identity Automation, LP a leading provider of Identity and Access Management (IAM) , application integration and data integration solutions is pleased to announce the release of its Active Directory Password Filter for its Data Synchronization System (DSS).

With the addition of the Active Directory Password Filter, DSS now supports two-way password synchronization.  This allows customers in an Active Directory environment to change their passwords using the built-in Windows tools.  Once changed, DSS can then securely synchronize those changes to other systems.

This new functionality adds to the already existing two-way password synchronization for Novell eDirectory.  Now passwords can be changed on either platform, using any tool, and then be synchronized to other applications and platforms.

Identity Automation, LP delivers identity management, application integration and data integration solutions that address the problems of cost and complexity associated with manual account lifecycle management processes and with connecting on-premise and cloud based applications and data.

Privately held, Identity Automation is headquartered in Houston, Texas. To learn more about Identity Automation’s identity management, application integration and data integration solutions, visit www.identityautomation.com.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Every organization running more than one system has a need to synchronize data. For different systems the type of data may be different but it is still just data. In all cases you have a “source” system and a “target” system. Wikipedia defines data synchronization as “the process of establishing consistency among data from a source to a target data storage and vice versa and the continuous harmonization of the data over time.”

The reasons for synchronizing data are infinite. We typically synchronize data based on one of three broad categorizations: application integration, business intelligence and identity provisioning.

Application integration fills the need of directly synchronizing business data directly between otherwise disparate systems. In a corporate environment this might mean synchronizing inventory data from an inventory tracking system to an ordering system. In an education environment data synchronization is used for cases like synchronizing “free and reduced lunch” status from a child nutrition system to a student information system. In all cases, there lies the basic need to extract data from the source, perform data transformation, implement logic and then load the resulting data into the target system.

Business intelligence requirements are slightly different. Instead of synchronizing data between systems, the focus here is to pull data from many sources to populate a central data warehouse. The primary purpose of the data warehouse is to provide a single target for defining reports that help the business operate and make decisions based on the data that it has in its various systems. For education we use that same architecture to build a student data warehouse that combines student data from systems like the student information system, child nutrition, transportation, grade book, library, etc., to provide parents with an aggregated view of their child data. In the case of business intelligence, data synchronization is key; however, we are still abiding by the same basic principle that we are simply moving data from source to target, with some intelligent logic in between.

Finally there is the matter of identity provisioning. Identity provisioning is a wonderful example of data synchronization. For this purpose you can automate account creation and lifecycle management by synchronizing identity information from your authoritative systems such as your HR or Payroll application. In those systems you track hires, job assignments, manager relationships, transfers, terminations, etc. By extracting and transforming this data, you can create accounts, manage group memberships, move accounts, disabled accounts, etc, without any human intervention. Even though these solutions can be extremely complex, one thing remains true: we pull data from a source system, we transform and perform logic operations on the data, and we push that data to a target system.

In case you feel like none of these scenarios are applicable to your organization, ask yourself this: Do we export text files and send them off to some person or organization? Do you receive files from elsewhere and import them into your systems (after perhaps some manually data cleansing). Do you get a spreadsheet of events and then use that information to manually make changes in your systems? If you answer yes to any of these, then this is very applicable to you. File import/export/transfer, etc. is definitely included in the application integration category. Same with manual entry BASED on data from another system. Notice above I did not specify the means of synchronizing the data, just that data from a source was synchronized to a target system.

So, why does this matter? Why am I so interested in the topic of data synchronization? Well, the reason is simple and, for me, very exciting. Let me explain. I’ve been in the IT industry since 1991 when I joined the USMC as a computer programmer. Since that time I have dealt with every data synchronization method possible. Since 1998 my job has strictly focused on this very subject. It’s been called many things but really I’ve specialized in data synchronization solutions. One thing I’ve learned to be certain is that the technology that is available on the market today is too complicated and too resource intensive! Customers are required to spend significant dollars to implement these solutions and then can’t support them once implemented. Projects can take months, sometimes years, to deploy. Today I came across a quote by Albert Einstein. It is now my favorite quote of all time: ” Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” I couldn’t have said it any better myself, Albert!

I’m proud to say that Identity Automation is building software that is all about getting back to the data basics. Our data synchronization tool, the Data Synchronization System (DSS), was designed to be easy to learn, easy to use yet still have the capability to handle any data synchronization need. How did we do this? How did we achieve the unachievable? Simple. We focused on the basics: we are synchronizing data from one bucket to another. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. Of course, the design of the user interface has a lot to do with it too. Instead of developing a tool with a lot of wiz-bang crazy cool features, we stuck to the basics. First of all, you define your projects from any flash-compatible browser running on any platform. Secondly, there is no new language to learn. All capabilities of DSS are defined as actions. These actions are listed in your browser session. To use them you drag them into your “Action Set Desktop”, click on them and fill out the appropriate property values for that action. Simple, right?

Of course, reading about it can only give you so much of an appreciation of such a tool. Please visit our product page on DSS and definitely give us a call so we can demonstrate some of those capabilities.

If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and will contact you as quickly as possible.

Identity Automation’s Identity Provisioning and Application Integration Tool Hits the Streets and Delivers Integration for On-Premise and SaaS Systems

HOUSTON—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Identity Automation, LP a leading provider of Identity and Access Management (IAM), application integration and data integration solutions is pleased to announce the release of its Data Synchronization System (DSS) product. The company has targeted the product to the SMB, Education and State and Local Government markets as an Identity Management and Application Integration tool.

Technology departments are under increasing pressure to lower costs without compromising service levels. With DSS it is possible to build comprehensive data synchronization solutions that result in improved service levels, reduced risk to the organization and improved usability of data.

All organizations require the ability to move data between disparate systems. A specialized example of this is an identity management provisioning system. An identity management solution pulls from authoritative systems, transforms that data, and writes it to specialized targets such as Active Directory or an LDAP directory.

Another example is consolidating data from various sources such as a financial system, student information system, gradebook system, library system, or any other type of system and storing it in a central data warehouse which can then be used for reporting or other business intelligence purposes.

Yet another example is moving data from a specific application such as an HR system, and pushing it directly to another application,   such as a hosted people management system, to auto-populate employees, their reporting relationships, and other relevant attributes.

Identity Automation’s DSS is designed to connect any combination of on-premise and cloud based applications and can be delivered to customers as an appliance or as a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering.

Identity Automation, LP delivers identity management, application integration and data integration solutions that address the problems of cost and complexity associated with manual account lifecycle management processes and with connecting on-premise and cloud based applications and data.

Privately held, Identity Automation is headquartered in Houston, Texas. To learn more about Identity Automation’s identity management, application integration and data integration solutions, visit www.identityautomation.com.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Looking to move to a current, stable, and supported identity management (IDM) environment, a major research University in Kansas, recently leveraged Identity Automation’s RAPiDiDENTiTY methodology to implement a complete IDM solution.

View Story      Download Story

Identity Automation makes the Educause IAM Vendors list for Software and Services.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Identity Automation is pleased to announce the release of its SiMPLE Identity Solution which is a low cost, quick implementation Identity Provisioning solution for both Microsoft and Novell environments.

Visit the Identity Automation SiMPLE Identity Solution page for more information.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Those of us that work in the Identity and Access Management space, recognize that there are going to be significant changes in the IAM arena over the next few years.  One particular change will be the movement of Identity related services to the cloud thus lowering the entry cost for such services to both smaller and budget/resource challenged organizations.

This position is also held by research groups such as Gartner.  Ant Allan, Research VP for the company, said the following at an Identity & Access Management Summit in London in 2009:

“There is a continuing need in this time of economic uncertainty and budgetary constraint for cost-effective, risk-appropriate IAM methods”.

“This includes growing demand for identity-aware networking, host-based and service-based IAM offerings ... “

Well before we started to see a down-turn in the economy, the whole concept of SaaS had become very palatable to businesses.  Just as a business relies on electricity that they do not produce, so too can they consume critical infrastructure services that they do not build and manage themselves.  This particular position is being further driven by the ever increasing need to comply with both internal and external mandates which makes building such an infrastructure and developing a staff of experts to maintain it more and more difficult.

Identity and Access Management, while vitally important, are not a core competency of most organizations. The complexity of such solutions makes the idea purchasing these capabilities from a third party very desirable. 

Identity automation now has offerings that play to this specific need.  With our hosted and/or managed provisioning solution, sponsorship / attestation solution and workflow solution it is now more affordable than ever to implement an automated system that will provide full identity lifecycle management, storage provisioning and more.

If you would like to learn more about our Identity Management solutions or any other Identity Automation offering please contact us  today.

Identity Automation has produced a calculator to help organizations quantify the savings that are possible to achieve by implementing a system for automated account provisioning and password self service.

The calculator has been populated with reasonable defaults but is completely customizable so it can reflect the details of your specific organization.  Give the calculator a try by visiting the Identity Automation Knowledgebase.

For more news, visit the Identity Automation Newsroom.  If you would like to be contacted by a Sales Representative, please submit your contact information and we will contact you as quickly as possible.

Use the Identity Automation ROI Calculator to determine how much money can realistically be saved by implementing a provisioning and/or password self-service solution.

This tool can help you understand the true value of implementing any one of our ARMS, DSS or RAPiD solution sets.

Note: A valid email address is required if you would like to receive a printable copy of the results.

Identity Automation architects were professional, creative and flexible in helping the University of Houston-Downtown implement Single Sign On.

In addition to helping us design and implement the right architecture, they worked with our systems administrators and developers as a team to achieve our the desired goal. I can truly say that they are easy to work with.

Identity Automation were the technical resource and support for our Identity Manager rollout.

Spring ISD was one of the first school districts to deploy an identity management system and we relied on their expertise throughout the project. Identity Automation also developed a custom state-of-the-art personnel assessment tool for our district, based on our specific needs. It has transformed our personnel evaluation process.

As its company name indicates, Identity Automation recognizes the power of identity-based solutions as the ultimate means of automating network processes. Identity Automation’s storage management services are built with identity-based software developed by Condrey Corporation and automate the full lifecycle management of user and collaborative storage. As file-based storage continues to grow at an exponential rate, Condrey Corporation will continue to work with exceptional partners such as Identity Automation in addressing the challenges that come through this growth.

I highly recommend Identity Automation for any IT needs. They have been reliable, experienced and trustworthy. We used their services for support and highly visible outage scenarios and they have exceeded our expectations each and every time.

I have partnered with Identity Automation on several high profile projects over the past five years and they always bring the best technical skills, proven methods and professional follow through to each engagement.

I consider Identity Automation to be a trusted partner and our go to partner for our customers’ identity management and Linux initiatives.

The Texas Office of the Attorney General engaged Identity Automation to implement an identity management solution for over 4,000 employees across several heterogeneous information systems.

Troy and his staff helped us custom tailor a solution that fit our specific needs. We couldn’t have been more satisfied with the quality of their work or the relationships we built in the process. Identity Automation stands out as a knowledgeable, personal, and trustworthy choice.

With identity management becoming an ever increasing challenge, especially in a K-12 school system, we chose Novell’s Identity Manager to meet this need. We selected Identity Automation as the vendor of choice to plan, and implement Identity Manager in our environment.

Their level of professionalism and care given to our project exceeded our expectations. Every phase of the project was well planned, and implementation went extremely well for such a large scale deployment. I would highly recommend the team at Identity Automation for your identity management needs.

CFISD has partnered with Identity Automation for the development and implementation of the district’s identity infrastructure as well as for auto-provisioning of network services for students and employees.

Using the skills and staffing of Identity Automation, the district’s IT team has been able to extend its capability and decrease the amount of time necessary to deploy complex, identity-based technology.