Tag Archive for: Identity Management

Identity Management in Higher Education

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Introduction

Technology plays a crucial role in the universities and institutions where students, alumni, faculty, and staff depend on high-tech services and tools to study, live, work, and play. As these institutions embrace the Internet for student services, administrative systems, research projects, self-service, and profile management, online security is at a premium. Users must feel protected for web channels to grow and enhance the user experience. At the same time, compliance mandates have become more complex and university breaches become more numerous; both which threaten the institution’s assets and brand name. Institutions that cannot meet this security demand will suffer.

PathMaker Group can help prepare educational institutions for these challenges by developing solutions for:

– Centralizing application access control.
– Providing strong, multi-factor authentication.
– Providing sophisticated real-time risk analysis and access prevention based on events and rules.
– Automating routine account management activities.
– Meeting regulatory requirements for reporting and attestation.
– Enabling new modes of inter-campus interactions.
– Protecting user identity data with a secure, scalable and highly available infrastructure.
– Bridging islands of user identity information across a variety of infrastructures. Read more

IBM Pulse 2012

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Business Without Limits!

Pathaker Group is an IBM Premier Partner with the sales and technical certifications required to sell and implement an ever expanding array of best in class security solutions from IBM. Be sure to put Pulse 2012 on your calendar and stop by the Solution Expo and visit our booth. Business partners and customers will learn how IBM is shaping the IT Security Landscape with newly acquired technologies and integrated solutions to meet the growing challenges that we face.

Check out some info from IBM about Pulse!

“Pulse 2012 returns to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas March 4-7, 2012 and we invite you to take part in the action! Experience first-hand how organizations in every industry are using Visibility Control Automation to improve the economics of their business infrastructures and speed the delivery of innovative products and services.

With over 7,000 attendees including industry-renowned speakers, Pulse 2012 is your ticket to hundreds of technology leadership sessions, industry-focused breakouts, and technical skill-building workshops. At this year’s conference you’ll have an opportunity to network with colleagues, participate in hands-on labs, and attend our largest-ever Solution Expo. Don’t miss this significant event!

The Pulse conference is now accepting session submissions! Visit the IBM Speakers page for the timeline, benefits and guidelines, or to answer the Call for Speakers today!” (IBM) Read more

Security and Identity Management Solutions for the Healthcare Industry

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Do you work in the medical or healthcare industry? Is your company in need of security or identity management solutions? If so, here are some of the key ways in which PathMaker Group can provide value in this field.

Enterprise Single Sign-on Doctors and nurses have a lot of passwords to manage as well as using shared workstations creating potential issues around people sharing a user ID to an account and people leaving an application or patient information open on a shared workstation. With ESSO, PathMaker Group can give the users a secure way to store all their passwords and automating the login and logoff process.

  • ESSO can be paired with an RFID badge – a quick tap of the badge can log a user on or off from the workstation, saving the time of entering the user ID and password over and over again as they switch between machines all day. A proximity sensor can be added to workstations to automatically lock them when a user forgets to tap out as they walk away from the machine.
  • Shared Workstation Management – Shared machines can be configured to be locked when an ESSO user leaves the workstation. When the next user comes in, any apps left open by the prior user can be gracefully closed to prevent the new user from having patient access under the prior user’s account.
  • Context Management ESSO can further streamline the process of accessing patient records across multiple applications. Tools, such as CareFX Fusion Context Management, provide the ability to script the sharing of patient identification across applications, removing the need for constant searches and patient lookups. Read more

Addressing NIST’s New Risk Management Framework

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The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) created a series of publications that provide guidance for federal agencies on the implementation, certification and accreditation of federal information system security. The same guidelines hold true for all commercial agencies/companies as well.

So the question that comes to our mind What is NIST’s New Risk Management Framework? NIST describes the RMF model as a series of six repeating steps designed to identify the security mechanisms necessary for an IT system, implement those protections, and validate their proper operation over the systems lifecycle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Using IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign On to Secure your Passwords

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A sticky note on your monitor is a good way to remember to bring home a gallon of milk to stay out of the doghouse with your spouse. A sticky note hidden around your desk with all your passwords is a good way to end up in the doghouse with your company’s IT security group!

Let’s face it; it’s hard to remember the passwords for every application we have to use at work. It’s even more challenging when the interval to change passwords is different for every application. Hmmm is my email password myusualpassword12, myusualpassword13 or myusualpassword14?

It’s natural to want an easy way to keep track of them. This leads to insecure things such as using your dog’s name, much easier than remembering X1nP4!e. It’s also easy for someone that knows you to socially engineer that password. Writing the complex password down is easy too. Again simple for someone to flip the keyboard to that sticky note and gain access to your accounts. Read more

Zombie Attrition Process (ZAP)

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Zombies are everywhere; they lurk in existing and new systems. These zombies don’t lust after our blood or consume our flesh. It is much worse than that. These zombies can cause companies to fail audits, they can be used for unauthorized access, and worst of all they can cost companies money. Technically we are talking about lifeless accounts that exist on systems and no one knows who they belong to. To us on “Team ZAP” or the Identity Management team these accounts are known as ‘Orphan Accounts’. I don’t know about you, but identifying and removing Zombies just sounds more fun.

Not the kind of Zombies you’re interested in? If you are wondering for how to prepare for the basic flesh eating zombie apocalypse, visit our friends at the Centers for Disease Control.

 

Picture from: http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp

If you want information on how to deal with Zombie or Orphan Accounts then keep reading. For full disclosure, dealing with Zombies is not for the faint of heart and I am not saying you wouldn’t get your hair mussed. Here at PathMaker Group we don’t mind getting a bit dirty when we deal with Zombies or Orphan Accounts in this proven approach: Read more

Using IBM Tivoli Identity Manager to Aggregate Email Notifications

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We all struggle with our electronic mailboxes. For every email we receive, there is some portion of our day devoted to opening and processing these emails. There is also serious time spent just deleting unwanted emails.

Take this example. A manager has a number of contractors that she has reporting to her, let’s say about 30. Every three months, an automated email is sent for each contractor requesting the manager to confirm the contractor is still employed. This is just one email sent every quarter for 30 contractors. That’s 120 emails the manager has to process. This adds up to a lot a time for a busy person. Remember this is just one process. There are other processes out there waiting to fill up unsuspecting mailboxes.

IBM Tivoli Identity Manager (ITIM) has the ability to automatically generate the email notification and aggregate the contents so the manager would get only one email. Using ITIM Out of the Box Lifecycle Operations and Post Office features an email can be formatted that contains all the information that was previously contained in the 30 individual emails. Read more

EHR Stimulus Incentive

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EHR technology is a medical software that can help your practice keep track of and treat patients more efficiently and effectively. Additionally, many of these technologies, when implemented correctly and used properly, are subject to government incentives, making them affordable to install.

With the Stimulus Incentive Calculator app for the iPhone, you can figure out how much you will earn by using certified EHR software. Using various factors, such as the size of your practice and the number of patients you see per year, this calculator can show you the incentives for which you may be eligible.

To learn more about the benefits of using EHR technology in your practice, contact PathMaker Group. We provide security solutions and identity management servicesw.

Visit our website or call (817) 704-3644.

Leveraging Centralized Log Management in a PCI DSS Environment

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Enterprise environments generate vast amounts of log data on their own before even being required to meet PCI DSS section 10 logging requirements. When taking into account the volume of logs from the large variety of sources across a network it is important to find an effective and efficient manner to address this data. IT departments could easily dedicate one full time employee to this task alone when logs are decentralized across the organization and need to be reviewed, at times, on a daily basis. Admins also face the daunting task of having a working knowledge of the vast array of system interfaces used to access and review this data where it is stored by default. Obviously this configuration is highly inefficient as well as impractical. The only logical solution to meet the PCI DSS required logging volume as well as the review requirements is a centralized log management system. PathMaker Group offers such a solution, built on a SaaS platform, that can provide the necessary functionality, usability, and reporting that PCI DSS requires. Read more

iTunes Accounts Hacked? or, Something Worse?

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So perhaps only a few have heard about the July 4th news story reporting that several iTunes accounts (30 accounts ??) across the globe were compromised by the developer of an application (or several apps).

The story alleges that iTunes was hacked and several user accounts were compromised by an application developer who exploited peoples’ iTunes accounts to purchase his applications, so much so that it elevated him to the top in his applications’ category. Now, i would suggest that more that 30 accounts would have to be involved to elevate an app to the top of its category, but that’s beside the point. It is likely that there are more accounts involved, some go not reported, some completely oblivious to their losses.

Read the story for yourself….

I’m not so convinced that iTunes was hacked by some thief brute forcing username/password combinations to crack 30 accounts out of millions. While it is entirely possible that Apple could be hacked and that data could be stolen in bulk, I think there are some alternative ideas that should be considered. Read more