This white paper is intended to give organizations an overview of the benefits of implementing, managing and maintaining network security within an identity aware framework. Many organizations have begun to realize the benefits of leveraging their identity stores in order to consolidate user information, reduce the maintenance workload on administration staff and control access to networked resources. The identity-driven enterprise - with an integrated access solution - makes the administration of "who" is accessing "what" a simple and straightforward task.

Removing the traditional IP addressing schema from reports and policies that only IT Administrators can decipher allows greater organizational participation in defining legitimate user and resource access. Additionally, the applications users are accessing can benefit from the enhanced security of identity-driven access control - as the user authentication mechanisms found in many applications can often be inadequate.

The Access Policy Lifecycle discussed in the following pages is a robust, top down approach to using identity to enhance network security, enabling the identity aware network.

Topics:

Network Security
Access Control
Application Security
Authentication
Identity Management
Endpoint Security
Security Policy