Identity management in an IT world that mixes the cloud, legacy mainframes, and everything in between has become very challenging. 21st century businesses have knowledge-workers spread across diverse geographic locations using a broad array of devices and methods of connectivity. There was a time when the only security necessary was a keypad on the computer room door. If you created your JCL (Job Control Language) deck correctly you had the ability to access any and all resources available to the mainframe. Program results were spit out onto green-bar, which could then be analyzed and acted upon by business users.

Modern Times

Fast forward to today. That same mainframe may be spitting out the results of those original batch files, but now the output is bits and those bits are dumped into a database where that data can be analyzed, sliced, diced, reported on, and acted on by a plethora of applications. Those applications were probably developed at different times using different technologies. If you are like most organizations you have evolved through various computing methods and different ways of authenticating and authorizing users.