Identity Management Software

It would be easy to say that identity management software decides if you are who you say you are. Well, easy for some. In short, identity management systems identify people within a system, in order to control access to resources. Here's a simple analogy ...

When I was a kid, our swim club would control which kids were allowed into each section of the pool. The club used three colored rubber wristbands to identify who belonged in the shallow end (green), the five foot deep area (blue), and the diving pool (black). Shades of Lance Armstrong's Livestrong bracelets.

In that aspect, identity management software assigns rights to users, based upon their credentials.

This has been a busy month in the indentity management software niche, with a pair of acquisitions taking center stage. Just yesterday, enterprise software developer BMC announced that it had picked up Calendra for a tidy sum. BMC's press release states that "Under the terms of the agreement, BMC software will acquire 100 percent of Calendra shares for approximately $33 million in cash." The acquisition should close this month.

Last Friday, IBM let out the word that it had acquired Las Vegas-based identity resolution software provider Systems Research and Development (SRD). SRD has two human-named, yet mysterious products: ERIK: Identity Recognition Software, and NORA: Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness Software. (If you read Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions you might begin to make the connection ... the casinos are big on checking identity ...)

Other identity management software providers include Computer Associates, Courion, COSuser, Evidan, M-Tech ID-Synch, Okiok, OpenConnect, PassGo, RSA, and Secureic. Evidan, a Groupe Bulle Company, offers a free white paper from their website: "A comprehensive, integrated and modular solution for Identity and Access Management."

Dr. John Suler's Psychology of Cyberspace pages provide an entirely different view of identity management in cyberspace.

You don't have to mention to your stock trading e-mail list that you also hang out at the 'I Dream of Jeannie' fan club site. When you join an online community, you often have a choice about how much, if any, personal information you place into the members' profile database.