Enterprise-Scale User Provisioning with Hitachi ID Identity Manager
 Abstract |
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This document describes the business problems of user provisioning: slow
resource provisioning, redundant systems administration and unreliable
access termination. It then describes how Identity Manager addresses these
problems with process change and user provisioning technology. Finally,
the business benefits of effective user provisioning are described.
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Introduction
This document describes the business problems of user provisioning: slow resource provisioning, redundant systems administration and unreliable access termination. It then describes how Identity Manager addresses these problems with process change and user provisioning technology. Finally, the business benefits of effective user provisioning are described.
Identity Manager is the user provisioning component of Hitachi ID Management Suite. Hitachi ID Management Suite is described in [link].
The remainder of this document is organized as follows:
- Business Problems With User Provisioning
The motivation for deploying Identity Manager.
- Shared Identity Management Infrastructure
How the proliferation of systems, each with their own user database, creates an administrative problem, and how consolidating administration of user identity can help.
- Streamlined User Provisioning Processes
How Identity Manager simplifies management of user identity data across multiple, heterogeneous systems.
- Identity Manager Technology
The Identity Manager network architecture, and design features that make it scalable, secure and deployable.
- Return on Investment
A basic ROI model describing how Identity Manager can generate significant cost savings.
- Summary
Business Challenges With User Provisioning
Several factors combine to make management of users and their security rights a growing challenge for many organizations:
- The number of individual systems and platforms that users must
access is large and growing.
- Users are increasingly dependent on systems access:
they cannot do their jobs without it.
- Organizations cannot afford additional IT staffing to cope with the growing burden of systems administration. On the contrary, most organizations would prefer to reduce the size of IT as a proportion of organization size.
These factors lead to the following costly business problems:
- Overloaded administration:
Access / security administrators are overworked. This leads
to staff burn-out and turn-over. Overloaded administrators
are prone to make errors, and improperly assign
privileges.
- Lost productivity:
Requests for new access are delayed, and the productivity of
users waiting for new access rights is reduced.
- Security risk: System access persists even after users change responsibility or leave an organization. This is not only a serious security vulnerability, but can violate regulatory requirements for effective internal controls.
Identity Manager is an automated user provisioning solution, designed to address these challenges.
Shared Identity Management Infrastructure
Systems administration burden is growing because there are an increasing number of systems to manage, and because almost every system manages user profiles in its own silo. For example, a single (human) user might have a personal profile on the mainframe, an LDAP directory, an e-mail system, an ERP system and elsewhere. Each of these systems is managed separately -- by different administrators, using different tools.
The natural solution for this problem is to consolidate information about users (sometimes referred to as user directories or security databases) into a single repository, and configure every system to refer to that single repository as an authoritative system of record regarding user identity.
This approach has some merit, hence the popularity of LDAP. However, it also has problems:
- Many systems are not compatible with LDAP, and cannot externalize their user/security databases.
- Some systems that can externalize user data can only do so for some attributes, and continue to have internal user profiles, which must still be managed directly.
- Many systems require data about users that is special to them, and would not benefit any other part of the IT infrastructure. If the data storage requirements of every application were added to a single LDAP directory, then the schema would grow to thousands of attributes per user -- thus creating new performance, scalability, reliability and management problems.
- Some user-related data is confidential, and does not belong in a shared directory.
The result of these problems is that while LDAP has helped to slow the proliferation of user databases, organizations continue to require, and must still manage, multiple systems that house data about users.
Since most organizations continue to have multiple user directories, the next best solution is to implement consolidated processes to manage user objects and access rights across multiple systems.
Identity Manager is designed to provide a shared set of processes and infrastructure to manage users and access across heterogeneous systems. It implements multiple processes that an organization can use to provision, update and deactivate user access to multiple systems.
Streamlined User Provisioning Processes
User Lifecycle
The basic lifecycle of identity management begins with hiring a user. This triggers creation of one or more system login accounts and other user objects (e.g., HR record, phone book entries, etc.).
Over time, the user will make numerous routine password changes, and may periodically forget his password, and require an administrative password reset on one or more systems.
As the user moves through an organization, changing job functions and possibly locations, the systems he must access, and his required privileges on those systems will change.
Finally, when a user leaves an organization, his access rights must be terminated. In most cases, his actual IDs persist for a while, until they are no longer required. In many organizations, user identifiers are never reused, to support long-term audit trails.
Each of the above processes is traditionally handled separately on each system. Each system has its own user directory and user/security management tools. In most organizations, each application is managed by its own administrators.
Identity Manager, a part of Hitachi ID Management Suite, is designed to leverage a single set of business processes to manage users and access rights on multiple systems, as illustrated in Figure [link].
User Lifecycle Management (1)
Automated Change Propagation
Identity Manager can monitor one or more systems of record on a periodic basis (e.g., nightly or every few hours), enumerating new, deleted and changed users. In the case of an HR application, for example, these changes may represent new hires, terminations and transfers. Auto-discovery is performed on all integrated systems and applications -- not just systems of record.
Changes detected by Identity Manager are passed through a data filter, which removes users that are outside Identity Manager's scope. For instance, in a scenario where Identity Manager manages all users in one country, but the HR system is global, Identity Manager would ignore changes to users from other countries.
All changes to a given user are aggregated and business logic is executed, with the set of changes as input. This is best illustrated with some examples:
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Detected change
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Actions
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Net result |
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New user appears in an HR application.
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Auto-provisioning. |
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New phone number detected on white pages directory.
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Identity synchronization. |
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Change to termination date is detected on the HR system.
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Automated termination. |
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User disappears from system of record (HR).
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Automated termination (2nd method). |
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User was added to Administrators group on Active Directory domain.
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Detect unauthorized privilege escalation. |
Collectively, these processes are known as automated user management. They are implemented by the ID-Track component in Identity Manager.
Several Identity Manager modules are involved in automated user management:
- The PSUPDATE auto-discovery engine, which extracts lists
of users, attributes, groups and group memberships from every
integrated system and application. In most deployments, PSUPDATE
runs nightly.
- The LOADDB batch loader, which collects detected changes to users
on target systems and updates the internal identity cache
accordingly.
- Login ID mapping data, which connects unique user identifiers on
different systems. For example, this may map employee
numbers in HR to login IDs on other systems. This data may be the
produced through consistent login IDs, mapping other attributes
or self-service reconciliation initiated through invitations sent
to users.
- The ID-Track module, which aggregates changes on a per-user basis
and executes organization-specific business logic for each changed user.
This business logic typically submits workflow change requests
based on detected changes.
- The API service, which accepts change requests from ID-Track and/or
external programs and submits them to the workflow service.
- The IDWFM workflow service, which accepts change requests, validates them,
fills in missing data (e.g., assigning login IDs and e-mail addresses),
selects suitable authorizers and invites them to approve or reject
each change.
- The IDTM transaction manager, which accepts approved changes from
the workflow engine and runs connectors to effect changes. IDTM
retries failed updates to enable reliable updates to target systems.
- A set of agents (connectors), almost all of which run locally on the Identity Manager server, each of which is designed to discover and manage users on a particular type of system or application.
Change Request Workflow
A key capability in Identity Manager is to accept change requests, to route them to the appropriate authorizers, and to act on change requests once sufficient authority has been received. This is designed to streamline requests, and to eliminate the need for system administrators to manually fulfill authorized changes.
Identity Manager's workflow automation engine streamlines the process of
requesting and authorizing the creation of new accounts, as well as
other security changes such as add/remove group membership,
change attribute value,
rename
(note)
or move user, delete or deactivate user and so on.
The Identity Manager workflow engine uses secure web input (HTTPS) and prompts authorizers for input using e-mail (normally SMTP).
The workflow automation engine works as follows:
- Request input:
- Users can authenticate to the system and make change requests.
- Change requests are formulated as changes to user profiles -- the requester's own (self-service) or another user's (the recipient).
- Change requests may be to change data attributes, add new accounts, add or remove group memberships, enable accounts or disable accounts. In other words, changes are formulated as changes to user profiles, in relation to the recipient user's current state.
- Plug-in programs can limit or alter requests -- for example by limiting who can submit a request, by limiting what requesters can ask for, by validating or filling in fields in a request, or by assigning a login ID to new accounts.
- Requests may be for changes to identity attributes or to add or remove single login accounts, collections of privileges (roles) or physical objects (e.g., tokens, building access badges, etc.).
- Request routing:
- Requests are automatically routed to appropriate authorizers, which are selected based on the identity of the requester and based on the roles and templates requested.
- All authorizers are prompted to respond concurrently. Authorizers may delegate alternates in their absence.
- In most cases, a response is only required from a subset of the authorizers -- for example, any one of three people can approve access to a system.
- Authorizers are notified by e-mail that their input is required. They click on a URL embedded in the e-mail to respond.
- Authorizers may be prompted to respond repeatedly if no response is received within a defined period. Requests that are pending response for too long may be escalated to new authorizers or to an incident management system.
- Authorization:
- Authorizers review requests using a web form, over a secure connection (HTTPS).
- Executing approved requests:
- Once adequate authorization has been collected, Identity Manager can automatically create login IDs, update existing IDs or request action from system administrators and others using e-mail and incident management system integration.
The Identity Manager workflow engine has built-in support for automatic reminders, escalation and delegation:
- When authorizers are first chosen, their out-of-office status on their primary e-mail system may be checked, to trigger early escalation.
- Non-responsive authorizers that have been asked to review a request receive automatic reminders. The reminder interval is configurable.
- Authorizers who remain non-responsive are automatically replaced with alternate authorizers, identified using escalation business logic. Escalation is most often based on OrgChart data -- i.e., the original authorizer's direct manager is often the escalated authorizer.
- Authorizers may delegate their authority, temporarily or permanently. Delegation may trigger its own approval -- asking the new authorizer to accept responsibility.
- A workflow manager can reassign the authorizers attached to open requests, for instance when they are terminated or when a request is urgent and the authorizer is unavailable.
Templates and Roles to Simplify Configuration
(2) Identity Manager can create login accounts using templates and roles:
- Rather than requiring an administrator to provide every
parameter when creating a new account on a target system, Identity Manager
can copy all relevant parameters from a template account.
In effect, Identity Manager implements a "clone user" operation.
- Note that not every user object on every target system can or should
be cloned. Requiring Hitachi ID Systems customer administrators to name the accounts
which should be available as templates
ensures that users whose profiles have accumulated excess
entitlements over time are not cloned.
- Change requests, automated processes or updates initiated
by administrators may specify attributes that override those copied
from the template. For example, a new account may be created by
copying a model account but overriding the employee number, phone
number, e-mail address, login ID, directory OU, home directory
server, mail server, etc.
- Attributes may be entered by a user or administrator (e.g.,
phone number), may be validated by a plug-in that implements
business logic (e.g., building code) or may be assigned
by a plug-in that implements business logic (e.g., login ID,
directory OU, e-mail address). Plug-ins embody business rules,
and may be as simple or as complex as required.
- Template accounts and membership in security groups can be collected
into named sets called roles. This allows requests to
specify whole sets of entitlements, rather than individual accounts
and groups, should be granted or revoked. This simplifies the UI
for business users, who may not have a clear, technically accurate
idea of what entitlements to ask for.
- Roles may be functional -- i.e., encapsulating all the entitlements
needed by a given class of user.
- Roles may also be application-oriented -- i.e., encapsulating a commonly
used set of entitlements within one or more applications.
- Functional roles are appropriate for large groups of users with
identical business responsibilities.
- Functional roles are also an excellent baseline for all users.
For example, a functional role may be defined for "basic
network and e-mail access."
- Application-oriented or technical roles are appropriate for users whose
requirements are relatively unique.
- Roles can be nested, to simplify definition of complex sets of entitlements.
For example, functional roles can and typically should be composed of
application roles, which in turn encapsulate fine-grained entitlements
on target systems.
- Change requests may include adding or removing roles, adding or removing accounts, adding or removing group memberships and updating profile attributes.
(3) Identity Manager does not require that users be classified into roles.
Identity Manager can be configured to compare users' actual security entitlements on target systems to the entitlements that their assigned roles predict and to automatically make adjustments to bring users into compliance. This process is called RBAC enforcement.
RBAC enforcement is not a mandatory component of Identity Manager, and indeed the scope of enforcement can be controlled at multiple levels:
- Users can be enabled/disabled for enforcement.
- Roles can be enabled/disabled for enforcement.
- Entitlements (i.e., accounts on target systems and security groups whose membership is managed by Identity Manager can be enabled/disabled for enforcement.
- The number of users whose profiles are subjected to enforcement per day can be capped.
These mechanisms allow Hitachi ID Systems customers to use RBAC enforcement -- or not -- based on the appropriateness of this mechanism to their environment. In general, we have found that RBAC enforcement is manageable for large numbers of users with identical needs (e.g., point of sale, retail, etc.) and to small numbers of high-risk users (e.g., finance/budget) but not usually cost-effective for other, unique, back-office user populations.
Attributes can be attached to templates, groups and roles in Identity Manager, to make them easier to find. For example, these resources can be classified by type and location and automatically assigned, filtered on search results, etc. accordingly.
Consolidated and Delegated Security Administration
Delegated user administration makes it possible to grant limited security privileges to departmental or regional staff. For example, an IT administrator at a business unit may be allowed to create accounts for user users in that business unit, and manage the user profiles and access privileges of local users. The same IT administrator would be unable to access user profiles for staff working in other business units and may only be able to perform certain types of updates, on certain systems.
Delegated user administration is implemented in the same manner as consolidated user administration, but with the addition of access controls, as is illustrated in Figure [link].
Consolidated and Delegated User Administration Console (4)
The scope of authority of a given security administrator can be limited to certain users, certain systems, certain groups or certain OUs. Access controls are normally implemented using business logic, which accesses information about both the IT administrator and intended recipients of security changes, to dynamically determine what kinds of updates are allowed.
Enterprise-wide Security Reporting
All data in Identity Manager is available via SQL or ODBC and accessible using standard analytical tools (Crystal Reports, Cognos, MS-Excel, SQL queries, etc).
The schema is well documented and is available to all product licensees and evaluators under NDA. The current release schema documentation is about 127 pages long, and includes detailed descriptions of every field, table, relation, value constraint, etc.
Data available through Identity Manager includes:
- A list of IDs per user.
- A list of IDs per system.
- A list of IDs per group.
- Allocation of login IDs to user profiles.
- Full detail of transaction history.
- Additional identity attributes (e.g., roles, employee ID) for users who were created using Identity Manager.
- Select identity attributes drawn from target systems -- such as last login time/date, account enabled/disabled, etc.
Identity Manager includes a number of standard reports, available through a web user interface, from the command-line, or by e-mail:
- Orphan and dormant accounts.
- Users who have accounts on specific systems.
- Templates and roles that a particular user has been assigned.
- User groups available on target systems.
- Membership of users in user groups on target systems.
- Transaction history per time period.
- Authorizer actions.
- Delegations (current and pending).
- Implementer definitions.
- Physical inventory availability.
- Requests, by status, state and result.
- Request statistics.
- Identity attributes, by user and by system.
- Past Reports.
Advantages of the reporting subsystem in Identity Manager include:
- The Identity Manager schema is a simple, relational, ODBC-accessible database. This makes it open to reports by third party programs, such as Crystal Reports or Cognos. In comparison, some competing products store all their data in opaque XML blobs and are therefore not accessible by third party reporting software.
- A rich set of built-in reports, including lists of users, accounts, group memberships, workflow requests, etc.
- Dual-format output (HTML, CSV) in all reports.
- Asynchronous report generation -- i.e,. generate a report, and display it as the data is produced.
- Availability of all reports both from the web console and command-line, where they can be scheduled for automatic execution.
- Availability of full schema documentation, which is guaranteed correct, as it is automatically generated from the same source files as the database tables themselves.
- Full access to raw data by any 3rd party reporting tools.
Web Services Flexibility
(5)A web services API (application programming interface) is exposed by Identity Manager, allowing other applications to access the workflow request queue and data about users and resources.
The API is accessed using SOAP and includes a WSDL specification. This makes it accessible across a wide range of platforms and programming languages, including Windows and Unix, .NET and J2EE, Perl, Python and PHP, etc.
The Identity Manager API supports a wide range of operations, including:
- Submitting new workflow requests. This includes requests to:
- Create new user profiles.
- Add login accounts to new or existing profiles.
- Add users to or remove users from managed groups.
- Assign roles to users or remove roles from users.
- Get or set user identity attributes.
- Initiating previously configured certification rounds.
- Searching for users or roles matching specified criteria.
- Creating, updating or deleting roles.
- Getting or changing the set of authorizers attached to a request.
- Approving or rejecting open requests.
The API allows organizations to develop their own request forms without having to code custom validation or authorization logic and without having to develop integrations with target systems and applications where users will be provisioned. This is helpful for specialized onboarding applications or to connect Identity Manager to an IT service catalog, for example.
Identity Manager Technology
Network Architecture
Identity Manager is designed for:
- Security:
Identity Manager is installed on hardened servers. All sensitive data is encrypted in storage and transit. Strong authentication and access controls protect business processes.
- Scalability:
Multiple Identity Manager servers can be installed, using a built-in data replication facility. Workload can be distributed using any load-balancing technology (IP, DNS, etc.).
- Openness:
Open standards are used for inbound integration (SOAP) and outbound communications (SOAP, SMTP, HTTP, etc.).
- Flexibility:
Both the Identity Manager user interface and all functionality can be customized to meet enterprise requirements.
- Low TCO:
Identity Manager is easy to set up and requires minimal ongoing administration.
Figure [link] illustrates the Identity Manager network architecture:
Network architecture diagram (6)
- Users normally access Identity Manager using HTTPS from a web browser.
- Multiple Identity Manager servers may be load balanced using either
an IP-level device (e.g., Cisco Local Director, F5 Big/IP) or
simply using DNS round-robin distribution.
- Native password changes on some systems may trigger transparent
password synchronization. A password change interceptor DLL,
library or exit may capture such changes and initiate transparent
password synchronization.
- Users may call an
IVR (interactive voice response) system with a telephone and be authenticated
either using touch-tone input of personal information or using a
voice print. Authenticated users may initiate a password reset.
- Identity Manager
connects to most target systems using their native APIs
and protocols and thus requires no software to be installed locally on
those systems.
- Local agents are provided and recommended for Unix servers and z/OS
mainframes. Use of these agents improves transaction security,
speed and concurrency.
- A local agent is mandatory on RSA SecurID servers.
- Where target systems are remote and communication with them is
slow, insecure or both, a Identity Manager proxy server may be co-located
with the target system in the remote location. In this case, servers
in the main Identity Manager server cluster initiate fast, secure
connections to the remote proxies, which decode these
transactions and forward them to target systems locally, using
native, slow and/or insecure protocols.
- Identity Manager can look up and update user profile data in an existing
system, including HR databases (ODBC), directories (LDAP) and
meta-directories (e.g., WMI to Microsoft ILM).
- Identity Manager can send e-mails to users asking them to register or to
notify them of events impacting their profiles. Over
163
events can trigger e-mail notification.
- Identity Manager can create tickets on most common incident management systems,
either recording completed activity or requesting assistance
(security events, user service follow-up, etc.). Over
163 events can trigger ticket generation. Binary integrations
are available for 16 help desk applications
and open integration is
possible using mail, ODBC, SQL and web services.
Supported Target Platforms
Identity Manager has built-in integration for many common types of systems, plus programmable agents that can be readily adapted to manage IDs and passwords on applications and hosted services.
The supported platforms may be summarized as follows:
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Directories:
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Servers:
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Databases:
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Any LDAP, AD, NDS, eDirectory, NIS/NIS+.
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Windows 2000, 2003, 2008, Samba, Novell, SharePoint.
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Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server, DB2/UDB, ODBC.
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Unix:
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Mainframes:
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Midrange:
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Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, 24 more.
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z/OS with RAC/F, ACF/2 or TopSecret.
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iSeries (OS400), OpenVMS.
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ERP:
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Collaboration:
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Tokens, Smart Cards:
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JDE, Oracle eBiz, PeopleSoft, SAP R/3, Siebel, Business Objects.
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Lotus Notes, Exchange, GroupWise, BlackBerry ES.
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RSA SecurID, SafeWord, RADIUS, ActivIdentity, Schlumberger.
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WebSSO:
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Help Desk:
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HDD Encryption:
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CA Siteminder, IBM TAM, Oracle AM, RSA Access Manager.
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BMC Remedy, BMC SDE, HP Service Manager, CA Unicenter, Assyst, HEAT, Altiris, etc.
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McAfee, CheckPoint.
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(8)Identity Manager includes a number of flexible connectors, each of which is used to script integration with a common protocol or mechanism. These connectors allow organizations to quickly and inexpensively integrate Identity Manager with custom and vertical market applications. The ability to quickly and inexpensively add integrations increases the value of the Identity Manager system as a whole.
There are flexible connectors to script interaction with:
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API binding:
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Terminal emulation:
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Web services:
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Back end integration:
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Command-line:
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Organizations that wish to write a completely new connector to integrate with a custom or vertical market application may do so using whatever development environment they prefer (J2EE, .NET, Perl, etc.) and invoke it as either a command-line program or web service.
If Hitachi ID Systems customer develops their own integrations, an effort of between four hours and four days is typical. Alternately, Hitachi ID Systems offers fixed-cost custom integrations for a nominal fee.
In most cases, Identity Manager does not require the installation of local agent software on target servers and applications. The only exceptions to this are two applications which do not publish a remote administration facility at all: RSA Authentication Manager servers and Entrust getAccess servers.
Identity Manager also includes local agents that can be installed on Unix servers and z/OS mainframes. While users and passwords on these systems can be managed without a local agent -- by emulating a terminal session over a Telnet, TN3270 or SSH protocol -- such terminal connections are slower, less reliable and (except for SSH) less secure than a local agent.
Ultimately, Hitachi ID Systems customer must decide whether reduced change control or more secure, fast and reliable administration are more important on Unix and z/OS systems and therefore make a determination about whether local agents are desirable on these systems.
In no case do the provided local agents interfere with the target system's normal operation -- the login process on each target system remains the same and no significant CPU or other load is placed on target systems.
Process Integration
Identity management is integral to an organization's business processes, and Identity Manager is designed to integrate with existing processes and systems:
- Monitoring authoritative directories / rules-based user provisioning
Identity Manager can monitor an existing system of reference, and create or delete accounts on managed systems based on changes. This works with HR systems, LDAP directories or simple text file extracts.
- Routing requests
By default, change requests are routed based on the resources specified. For example, all requests for accounts payable access go to one or more authorizers attached to that account type.
The list of authorizers required to approve a request may be adjusted based on other variables:
- The identity of the requester (e.g., Executives submitting requests may not require approval; others may require approval by someone in their management chain.)
- The identity of the recipient.
- Other attributes of the request (location, department code, etc.).
To maximize flexibility, the process of adjusting the list of authorizers is implemented with a plugin architecture.
- Assigning new, standard login IDs
Login IDs for new accounts can be assigned manually by a designated approver, or automatically by a plugin program that implements site-specific logic (for example, rules such as first initial + last name + unique digit).
- Escalating requests for authority
Identity Manager supports many features to ensure that requests for authorization are satisfied quickly:
- Grouping authorizers, and only requiring approval from a subset of each group.
- Temporarily delegating authority, so that authorizers can safely leave for holidays and other absences.
- Sending reminders to unresponsive authorizers.
- Automatically escalating unfulfilled requests for approval.
- Acting on behalf of existing processes
Some organizations already have a working, automated process to submit, route and approve change requests. What these organizations require is automation to act on approved requests.
Identity Manager exposes both a web service and library-level RPCs to enable existing workflow processes to trigger administration actions, such as creating new accounts and updating or deactivating existing ones, on managed systems.
Scalability
Scalability in a combined system for user provisioning, access management and password management is primarily relevant to the password management component:
- User provisioning is fairly uniform over time -- change requests and administrative actions may take place on any day, at any hour. In other words, onboarding and deactivation are not normally bursty processes.
- In contrast, password management is very bursty. Most password changes happen at login time, in the morning. The largest spikes occur in the first work hour after a long weekend or holiday.
- Password management and in particular password synchronization is used regularly by all users -- not during onboarding, moves and deactivation.
Typical peak transaction rates for a 10,000 person organization are 10 events/hour for provisioning and 5,000 events/hour for password synchronization.
Accordingly, the following discussion focuses on Password Manager, since password management requires extreme scalability, which account provisioning does not. Identity Manager is built on the same scalable architecture, but simply does not require the same benefits.
(9) Password Manager has been deployed by very large corporations. Examples of large deployments include:
- Organizations with over 750,000 Password Manager users managing passwords on a single Password Manager instance, load balanced between just two servers.
- Users distributed over six continents.
- A single Password Manager instance, running on a single server, managing passwords on over 3,200 password systems.
Password Manager features that support scalability include:
- The ability to install multiple instances per server.
- The ability of instances to span multiple servers, where each server in a group is functionally identical; supporting the same users, systems and features.
- A built-in, high-performance identity cache, which includes
server-to-server data replication in real time.
- Built-in services to monitor server health and dynamically update DNS records; for example to remove a malfunctioning server from load balancing rotation.
In addition, Password Manager incorporates many features that, while not directly performance-related, are required by large organizations:
- The ability to operate across firewalls: between the user and Password Manager, as well as between Password Manager and managed systems.
- Inclusion of a proxy service, which allows a Password Manager server in one location to manage passwords elsewhere, across slow and/or insecure WANs.
- Support for multiple user interfaces and UI languages per server instance.
- Auto-discovery of user IDs on managed systems, to eliminate ongoing manual administration and to minimize initial configuration effort.
- The ability to support self-service password reset for users who forgot their initial NOS login password without having to deploy desktop software (secure kiosk account).
- Support for 21 user interface languages.
Security
Identity Manager improves the security of user access administration by establishing the following processes:
- When users leave the organization, their systems access is terminated promptly and reliably.
- All access changes are subject to a rigorous, globally-enforced approvals process.
- Audit reports listing accounts per user and access privileges for users across systems can be generated easily and used to identify and remove inappropriate access privileges.
- Access change history, including who submitted each request, who approved it and the change details, are logged and available as an audit trail.
- Orphan and dormant accounts are easily identified and are subsequently deactivated and deleted.
- New accounts are created in compliance with security policy and standards.
- Initial passwords are never set to default, guessable values and are never transmitted in plaintext e-mail.
Identity Manager is designed to be secure. It is protected using a multi-layered security architecture, which includes running on a hardened OS, using file system ACLs, providing strong application-level user authentication, filtering user inputs, encrypting sensitive data, enforcing application-level ACLs and storing log data indefinitely.
Identity Manager never requires plaintext passwords to be stored in configuration files or scripts and does not store plaintext passwords anywhere. Identity Manager does not ship with a default administrator password -- one must be typed in at installation time.
These security measures are illustrated in Figure [link].
Network architecture security diagram (10)
Rapid Deployment
Hitachi ID Systems solutions are optimized for rapid deployment -- this is a core design characteristic across all products in the Hitachi ID Management Suite. Features such as a dynamic workflow, an architecture which does not depend on role engineering, auto-discovery of users on target systems and self-service login ID reconciliation are all designed to eliminate costly deployment steps and minimize ongoing administration.
Identity Manager is designed for rapid deployment:
- Single, Dynamic Workflow for Change Authorization
Simplifies configuration and maintenance of authorization processes. A single flow-chart (state diagram) is used to authorize all requests in the Identity Manager workflow engine. The Identity Manager workflow engine supports:
- Parallel change authorization.
- Multiple groups of multiple authorizers.
- Automatic reminders to unresponsive authorizers.
- Automatic escalation, when authorizers continue to be unresponsive.
- Delegation -- for example, when authorizers take extended leaves of absence.
- Authorizers with veto power over some or all of a request.
Using a single, dynamic workflow, enterprises can focus on the key questions in an identity and access management workflow system:
- Is the change request syntactically correct and appropriate in its business context?
- Whose authority is required before the request can be implemented?
This eliminates the need to define hundreds of flow-charts for various kinds of change requests.
- No requirement for role engineering
Identity Manager works without a formal model of user privileges, which may take years to develop. Automation can provision coarse-grained access for new users, and terminate all access for departed staff, without a detailed model of rights for each job code.
Workflow addresses the need to provision users with more fine-grained privileges using a request/approval/audit process, which requires very little work to setup.
- Cloning model accounts
Identity Manager creates new accounts by cloning existing ones, which have been identified by the Identity Manager administrator as "models." This eliminates the need for Identity Manager administrators and platform administrators to collaborate in fully specifying the configuration of all new accounts.
(11) Password Manager is designed for rapid deployment:
- No client software required,
even for access to self-service password reset
from the workstation login prompt.
- Automated discovery
of every login ID on every managed system, nightly.
- Self-service login ID reconciliation
where login IDs on different systems are different and
there is no pre-existing correlation data.
- A built-in identity cache
that captures user profile data and eliminates the need to install
or manage a database or directory before installing Identity Manager.
- Built-in connectors for every common system and application
eliminating the need for customers to develop their own
connectors to common, off-the-shelf target systems.
- Remote agents
mean that Identity Manager can manage users and passwords on
systems without requiring the installation of intrusive
local software on each target system.
- Flexible agents enable organizations to integrate Identity Manager with custom applications, vertical market software, application service providers (ASPs) and service bureaus quickly -- taking just 2 hours to 4 days per new target system.
Return on Investment
Identity Manager realizes cost savings for security administrators and enhanced productivity for users through:
- User Productivity:
Users get new and changed access more quickly.
New hires can be provisioned in hours rather than days or weeks. Staff with changed responsibilities get updated access privileges immediately, rather than waiting for changes to be approved and implemented.
- Reduced Administration Transaction Volume:
Security administrators are freed from routine tasks.
Routine tasks, such as setting up standard systems access for new users, deactivating access after routine terminations and making changes to identity attributes or group memberships can be handled by automated processes and self service. Security administrators are freed to focus on more valuable tasks.
- Improved administrator efficiency:
Administrators can manage user access to multiple systems from a
single console.
A consolidated web console allows both global and regional / departmental security administrators to manage any user's access to any combination of systems from a single point. This reduces time wasted switching between native administration programs, duplicate input and platform-specific training.
Summary
Efficient and reliable user provisioning yields better productivity for users, reduced administration overhead, and better security.
Identity Manager allows organizations to streamline their user provisioning, access management and termination processes through:
- Identity synchronization:
Detect changes to personal data, such as phone numbers or department codes, on one system and automatically make matching changes on other systems for the same user. - Auto-provisioning:
Detect new user records on a system of record (such as HR) and automatically provision those users with appropriate access on other systems and applications. - Auto-deactivation:
Detect deleted or deactivated users on an authoritative system and automatically deactivate those users on all other systems and applications. - Self-service requests:
Enable users to update their own profiles (e.g., new home phone number) and to request new entitlements (e.g., access to an application or share). - Delegated administration:
Enable managers, application owners and other stake-holders to modify users and entitlements within their scope of authority. - Authorization workflow:
Validate all proposed changes, regardless of their origin and invite business stake-holders to approve them before they are applied to integrated systems and applications. - Consolidated reporting:
Provide data about what users have what entitlements, what accounts are dormant or orphaned, change history, etc. across multiple systems and applications.
Identity Manager is designed to be scalable, secure and easy to deploy.
Appendix: Hitachi ID Management Suite Overview
The Hitachi ID Management Suite is a complete identity and access management solution that enables organizations to more securely and efficiently manage the user lifecycle across enterprise applications and systems.
The Hitachi ID Management Suite combines the power of Hitachi ID Systems flagship technologies, Identity Manager for user provisioning and Password Manager for password management with more targeted products including Hitachi ID Group Manager to manage user access rights, Hitachi ID Access Certifier to review user rights and clean up stale privileges and Hitachi ID Privileged Password Manager to securely manage privileged passwords.
The Hitachi ID Management Suite creates real business value by increasing productivity for users, reducing IT overhead, strengthening network security and providing internal controls to support compliance with privacy protection and corporate governance regulations.
The Hitachi ID Management Suite is designed as identity and access management middleware, in the sense that it presents a uniform user interface and a consolidated set of business processes to manage user objects, identity attributes, security rights and authentication factors across multiple systems and platforms. This is illustrated in Figure [link].
Hitachi ID Systems Hitachi ID Management Suite Overview: Identity Middleware (13)
The Hitachi ID Management Suite includes several functional identity and access management modules:
- Identity Manager
-- Automated onboarding and deactivation, identity synchronization and change request workflow.
- Automated propagation of changes to user profiles, from systems of record to target systems.
- Workflow, to validate, authorize and log all security change requests.
- Consolidated and delegated user administration.
- Federated user administration, through a SOAP API to a user provisioning fulfillment engine.
- Consolidated access reporting.
- Access Certifier
-- Periodic review and cleanup of security entitlements.
- Delegated audits of user entitlements, with certification by individual managers and application owners, roll-up of results to top management and cleanup of rejected security rights.
- Password Manager
-- Password synchronization and self-service reset.
- Password synchronization.
- Self-service and assisted password reset.
- Enrollment and management of other authentication factors, including security questions, hardware tokens, biometric samples and PKI certificates.
- Group Manager
-- Self service management of security group membership.
- Self-service and delegated management of user membership in Active Directory groups.
- Hitachi ID Org Manager
-- Delegated constuction and maintenance of Orgchart data.
- Self-service construction and maintenance of data about lines of reporting in an organization.
- Privileged Password Manager
-- Control and audit of access to privileged accounts.
- Periodically randomize privileged passwords.
- Ensure that IT staff access to privileged passwords is authenticated, authorized and logged.
- Hitachi ID Login Manager
-- Automated application logins.
- Automatically sign users into systems and applications.
- Eliminate the need to build and maintain a credential repository, using a combination of password synchronization and artificial intelligence.
- Hitachi ID Telephone Password Manager
-- Telephone self service for passwords and tokens.
- Turn-key telephony-enabled password reset, including account unlock and RSA SecurID token management.
- Numeric challenge/response or voice print authentication.
- Support for multiple languages.
The relationships between the Hitachi ID Management Suite components is illustrated in Figure [link].
Components of the Hitachi ID Systems Hitachi ID Management Suite (14)