Oracle Identity & Access Management Cloud Support

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Recently, PathMaker Group completed a successful migration for T-Mobile of MetroPCS’s on-premise Oracle Access Manager deployment into an Amazon Web Services environment. T-Mobile selected PathMaker Group based on our experience deploying and managing Oracle Identity and Access Management products in the cloud.

Following the launch, PMG was further engaged by T-Mobile to provide 24×7 tier 2 and 3 support for the Oracle applications providing access management for MetroPCS’s customer facing e-commerce site. The tasks being performed by the global support team include monitoring, performance tuning, configuration management, new feature development and patching. Please contact the PathMaker Group team today to see how we can provide managed services, IAM support services or a full IAM implementation.

20/20 Vision: Identity and Access For The Next Decade

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20_20 banner Dallas

As attacks become more difficult to detect and defend, and threats
continue to grow, no organization is immune from security breaches.
We anticipate a shift around identity and access management (IAM) as
enterprises cope with increased regulatory compliance requirements,
insider and external threats, cloud integration, and more.

IBM Security threat aware IAM solutions help prepare you for current and
future security challenges with identity intelligence and secure online
access in mobile, cloud, mainframe, and social environments.

Explore IBM Security identity and access management
Join IBM and Pathmaker Group and learn how to:
• Use security intelligence to improve user oversight and compliance.
• Respond effectively to the rising number of identity focused attacks.
• Safeguard access within mobile, cloud, mainframe and social
environments.
• Protect against advanced insider threats.
Don’t miss this chance to network with your peers, talk to IBM security
experts, and get practical advice for your own IAM environment.

agenda

 

A Sobering Day for All CEOs

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Sadly, the CEO presiding over Target during the recent data breach resigned today.  See USA today article.

This series of unfortunate events for Target begs a key question relating to the risks every company CEO faces today. Did Target leadership ask the right questions about overall IT security and the risk every company faces?

Protecting a company from Cyber bad guys is a never ending battle.  It’s a game of leap frog with some serious consequences if you get behind.  With all the opportunity for full-time, professionally paid, government backed hackers to spend all day every day figuring out new ways to wreck a company, the priority for combating this enemy needs to be pretty high on the list for every CIO and CEO.  But it’s not just about spending all the money you can afford to spend.  It’s about understanding where to spend the money on the right technology.

How do leaders responsible for protecting a company sort out all the noise from the real threats?  This has become a constant exercise in analyzing risk and applying financial priorities accordingly.

As fast as the bad guys are coming up with new ways to exploit a target, new innovative minds are working to counter their moves.  Many of these great technologies are being folded into a portfolio of products and solutions that can be layered across an enterprise to protect and prevent the latest threats from creating the worst kind of headlines.

IBM has been on a major buying spree for the last several years snapping up some of the best and brightest technologies and resources across the globe.  They are quickly assembling an array of tools that are being shaped into the worlds best security risk analysis platform.  By leveraging this risk-based assessment direction, IT leaders can depend on technologies that will not only provide the intelligence about where to address risk, but can be assured that these technologies are probably the best that money can buy.

IBM is currently the third largest security company in the world with the goal of being the largest and the best.  As a Premier IBM Business Partner, we see this investment first hand.  See ComputerWorld’s perspective.

PathMaker Group serves our customers by planning, implementing, and managing these security solutions across the enterprise.  IT Security is a rapidly changing, complex business and our partnership with IBM helps us keep our customers one step ahead of the bad guys.

Target Data Breach

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How did they pull it off and how can you safeguard your environment from a similar event?

The Target Stores data breach started by exploiting a vulnerability in an externally facing webserver.  Once inside, hackers took command of an internal server and planted malware on the Point of Sale devices in stores all over the US.  The harvested data was stored internally until the hackers reached back in to grab the millions of credit card account records that were stolen.  More details can be found at http://krebsonsecurity.com/

With the tools available today, how could this event happen?  What can you do to safeguard your environment from a similar incident?

PathMaker Group recommends the following measures:

  1. Assess the overall security posture of your organization.  Our company provides a rapid assessment covering 16 security domains enabling you to understand where you may have major gaps.  We can help you prioritize these gaps to help you to maximize your risk mitigation.
  2. Test your environment (and your website code) for vulnerabilities.  External and internal penetration testing is a necessary starting place, but if you develop your own website code, scanning your application code prior to releasing the system to production is essential as these techniques and tools will surface many more vulnerabilities.  We can help with both of these services.
  3. Leverage security intelligence technologies to correlate and identify suspect events before massive damage can occur.  We can rapidly deploy an industry leading solution for you in a matter of days including setting up a managed service.

For help or more information, please contact PathMaker Group at 817-704-3644

Keith Squires, President and CEO, has been in high demand by the media to add insight to this recent news.  Radio and television news interviews, including CBS National News, are available to view at the following link:

https://www.pathmaker-group.com/home/pathmaker-group-news/

Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit

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How Can a Company Guarantee a Successful, Strategic Identity Access Management Program?

The Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit is right around the corner and leaders from all over the world will be coming to try to get this question answered.  Here are a few ideas from our ten years in the industry.

Strategic Identity and Access Management (“IAM”) projects can be difficult and the new challenges with mobile, social, and cloud compound the problem.  Protecting the perimeter is not enough anymore.  Safeguarding identities are the key to a truly secure enterprise.

The industry has seen way too many train wrecks with IAM.  To get beyond basic capabilities and really use IAM systems as a foundation for strategic IT, a company MUST take the time up front to consider the long-term plan.  Near-term, immediate priorities can be solved with client-based single sign-on, basic provisioning, simple roles and audit reports.  But with a short-term (and maybe short sighted) plan, a company can just as easily limit their ability to solve more complex problems.

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Identity and Access Management Best Practices Webinar

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How Levi leveraged Identity Management infrastructure to enable “just in time” fully automated privileged system access

Presented by:

  • Chuck Lankford, Global Director of Security at Levi Strauss & Co.
  • Chris Fields, Vice President of Security Strategy, PathMaker Group
  • Ravi Srinivasan, Director of IBM Security, Strategy, and Product Management

In our 50 minute webinar you will:

  • Learn about the latest market trends in Identity and Access Management
  • See why the IBM IAM Suite is one of the hottest sellers in the last six months
  • See what’s new with the IBM IAM Suite including upcoming features and capabilities
  • Hear what customers are buying and why
  • Learn the five most common benefits from a robust IAM infrastructure
  • Learn about best practices for implementing provisioning, access management, federation
  • Hear customer use cases and their key business drivers for IAM

Chuck_Lankford

About the key presenter, Chuck Lankford:

Chuck is the Director of Global Information Security for Levi Strauss & Co. and has responsibility for protecting LS&Co. from threats to the confidentiality, integrity and availability of LS&CO systems, information and infrastructure. Chuck has been with LS&Co. more than 10 years has served in global IT leadership roles for 17 years. Prior to joining LS&Co. Chuck was Director of Global Networking for network products manufacturer 3Com (Santa Clara, CA) where he architected and managed 3Com’s global voice, data and video networks. Chuck holds numerous certifications including Certified Information Security Systems Professional (CISSP), Certified Ethical Hacker, Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) and Certified Information Systems Risk Consultant (CISRC).test

Chris_Fields

About Chris Fields:

Chris has held his CISSP certification since 2003 and is the Identity Management Architect & Visionary responsible for setting the strategic direction and architecture approach for all of our IBM identity and access management projects. He is also responsible for managing partner relationships with identity management vendors. Chris’ love of technology makes everything about his job enjoyable. Mentoring and expanding the technical skill sets of his employees is the most enjoyable aspect of his daily activities. Equally enjoyable is the time spent helping clients to understand the industry and discuss viable options for them to begin and mature their identity and access management infrastructures.

Ravi_SrinivasanAbout Ravi Srinivasan:

Ravi manages the IBM identity, access and mainframe security portfolio strategy and product management based in Austin, Texas. He has over 15 years of experience in product management, market strategy, and development in software and services industries. Ravi meets and consults with senior management, lines of business owners and IT operations management around the world on their key security, risk, and compliance initiatives. He’s also a frequent speaker at trade, analyst conferences and customer events to share a worldwide customer perspective and insights on secure mobile, cloud and social business transformations. Ravi mentors several security services practitioners and product managers to develop practical solution approach to changing security, risk and compliance needs.

7th Stage (Security) of IS growth, Part II

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A little background:

Now that you’ve been in the CIO’s position for your first quarter, it is time to prepare for your first review with the board of directors.  The agenda for the IS presentation will cover key factors that you discovered in your operations, your accomplishments and your plans for the next year.  Since this is the quarter for your next year’s budget, it should contain the funding needed to accomplish the IS plan.

One of the key factors in the review of your operations was discovering the lack of security focus and non-compliance issues that made the operations vulnerable to unwanted intrusion in your network.  Listed in your accomplishments is the Security Assessment study and recommendations provided by PathMaker Group when you engaged them for a study of your IS environment.  One of their recommendations was to deploy IBM’s Security products for managing Identify and Application Access in your enterprise network.  This is an important undertaking as your company will replace the outdated security monitoring with IBM’s Showcase Solution to keep unwanted intruders out while making it easier for the authorized users to have easy access to their applications.  As a result of PathMaker Group’s findings and recommendations, you asked them to submit a proposal for the corrective solution using IBM Security Products and PMG Professional Services to deploy them in your IS Network.

This section of your review was very well received by the board of directors and they gave you the approval to get started.

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OIM User Attributes Modification

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While integrating Oracle Identity Manager within a corporate environment, sometimes it is important to change some user attributes externally. OIM API provides simple means to perform these operations.

As is the case in any operation, a connection needs to be made to the OIM instance. This is a simple task, but one must ensure that credentials are properly stored and protected.

 

protected static OIMClient client;

private static String OIMInitialContextFactory = “weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory”;

 

public OIMConnect(String fileName) throws Exception

{

Hashtable<String, String> env = new Hashtable<String, String>();

env.put(OIMClient.JAVA_NAMING_FACTORY_INITIAL, OIMInitialContextFactory);

env.put(OIMClient.JAVA_NAMING_PROVIDER_URL, CONNECTION_URL);

client = new OIMClient(env);

System.setProperty(“java.security.auth.login.config”, AUTHCONF_FILE);

System.setProperty(“OIM.AppServerType”, “weblogic”);

client.login(OIMUSERNAME, OIMUSERPASSWORD.toCharArray());

return;

}

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TDI Null Entries

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Tivoli Directory Integrator is a powerful tool that we often use as part of an ITIM migration or rollout. What makes it great is its unique ability to translate data from one source of almost any type into another. It really doesn’t matter if you’re using something as a primitive XLS maintained manually by HR or a complex set of relational databases. TDI can get the data, do any number of out of the box or even custom translations that are necessary to get your data into the form you want it.

Through this data “smoothing” process there will inevitably be some odd-ball data that you find. Whether it is a random string value when you expected a Boolean true/false or a legacy attribute that’s only assigned to 25% of the objects you’re migrating.

And then there’s the “null” entry, which will come up often as well. Null values are pesky because we don’t always know why they’re there, sometimes it’s important that the attribute is moved over whether there is a value assigned or not. Other times we want to clean up our data while we’re moving it, and pull out all any attributes assigned with no value. Luckily for us, TDI has a feature built in to assist with this. Read more