Information sharing becomes extremely complex once you need to secure information outside and across enterprise boundaries, such as information for business customers, prospects, partners, dealers, or other “outsiders.”
The current IT practice of concentrating all security at the network perimeter has created an enterprise environment that looks like a single hard shell around a soft chewy center (Think Tootsie Pop);
However, a cohesive identity management strategy across the enterprise lets an enterprise securely facilitate these exchanges without placing undue strain on often over-burdened internal resources. This makes it easier to develop and expand alliances and channels, expand and accelerate business opportunities, at the same time reducing IT cost and complexity – thereby reducing leaks, leaks of information and productivity. Identity Management helps organizations deal with many of the issues and challenges they face as they attempt to respond to information sharing, increased security threats, wide-ranging compliance initiatives and rising IT bottlenecks. Moreover, Identity Management defends an organization not only from external threats but also more importantly from internal threats – often the source of the majority of security risks.
The “big idea” here is to bring security closer to the data and the services it is trying to protect. At the EBS Group, we think of Identity as a Service which externalizes Identity into a service layer in the Enterprise Architecture..
It makes identity a key security artifact on which to base security decisions wherever they need to be made, making it possible to build security at the appropriate perimeter; be that the Network perimeter, at the application perimeter, or even at the data store perimeter. At the same time, it provides centralized management of security policies and scalable management of the massively distributed identity data so that corporate networks can be safely opened up to customers, suppliers, and partners.
Information sharing creates many opportunities for enterprises, but also many challenges and dangers. IT growth must contend with the legions of information and security threats that cast a shadow over your best-laid business plans. Oracle has developed and refined state-of-the-art information security for customers worldwide. The EBS Group can help your organization deploy best practices to protect against security threats while maintaining the agility and functionality of your IT infrastructure.
