The latest Information Week (March 15, 2004), has a significant article on The Need For Identity Management. The article inspired me to start documenting APU's need for further pursuing an Identity Management (IdM) strategy. However, the article in Information Week had some intersting points of dicussion.

The promise of Identity Management is to improve security, boost worker productivity, cut costs, and reduce the "integration friction" usually connected with giving employees, business partners, customers, and suppliers access to internal systems. The process starts internally, but the long-term objective is clear: Build a series of interconnected systems so an employee logged on to his company's intranet can access a business partner's systems and have those systems automatically trust the employee's digital credentials. The way to do this is through standards. This perspective of cross organizational authorization is called Federated Identity Management. Dan Blum, of the Burton Group has a good definition for federation, "standards and agreements that make identity and entitlements portable across autonomous domains".

The Architecture Working Group has arrived at a Password Reset Recommendation.

The [Password Reset Project] will now go back to the Project Management Office, where an implementation team will be established, upon approval from the IMT Cabinet.

There should be enough information to carry out the project in a short timeframe. Some details will be refined during implementation, including an expanded list of security challenge questions to preset to the user. Thanks to all AWG members who contributed their time and clear thinking toward this Self-Service goal. I am sure your feedback will be appreciated as the project moves forward.

From the, "Its about time dept..."

Intel Releases Linux Driver For Centrino WLAN - Werner Heuser writes "Finally Intel has made their different announcements about Linux support for the WLAN part of the Centrino technology become true. Though not yet officially announced an Open-Source driver with included firmware is available at SourceForge. The driver is still experimental and supposed to work with 2.4 Kernels as well as with 2.6 ones."

I have been running the Windows driver via the linuxantNDIS Loader in Linux since I got my Thinkpad R40. I'll have to give the native driver a go, and see how it works.

Update: According to the Todo list, the driver doesn't yet support WEP. I will definately be sticking with the Linuxant driverloader while keeping an eye on this project. LinuxAnt even supports WPA so they are way ahead.

W3C moves ahead with mobile Web standard - Efforts to improve the Web-surfing capabilities of handheld devices took a leap forward Thursday with the recommendation of a new standard by the World Wide Consortium (W3C). Infoworld Standards

CC/PP 1.0 Makes a lot of sense. Allow the web client to communicate with the web server in an intelligent way to negotiate a viewable format/display size.

Documentum eRoom Enterprise Delivers Collaborative Content Management -

Documentum, 2004-03-08: Documentum, the leading provider of enterprise content management (ECM), today announced the availability of Documentum eRoom Enterprise 7.2, a highly flexible collaborative environment that introduces new capabilities that address the collaborative nature of content creation and management. eRoom Enterprise 7.2 provides the ability to generate event-triggered workspaces based on pre-defined business rules, enabling team members to securely collaborate within the context of a process.

For example, an organization could automate a request for proposal submission process by predefining a workflow that involves employees from Sales, Finance and Engineering. When the proposal reaches the approval stage of the process, eRoom 7.2 can automatically trigger the creation of workspaces, pre-configured with appropriate memberships, content and tools, to enable distributed teams to work together in a collaborative environment.

"Documentum advances the notion of collaborative content management with its latest version of Documentum eRoom Enterprise 7.2, said David Coleman, managing director, Collaborative Strategies. "eRoom Enterprise 7.2 hits the mark for delivering a structured environment without hampering creativity, enabling organizations to capture all of the valuable content not typically associated in an often rigid business process."

Read the full Press Release.

Jabber, Inc. has announced a suite of wireless clients for RIM, PocketPC, Smartphone, Symbian and J2ME devices, as well as gateways for WAP and SMS.

Apparently they are currently available for testing, but will be released April 1st.

See the Press Release.

Jabber has announced the availability of a new major release of their eXtensible Communcations Platform, XCP 3.0.

New Features

• improved hooks for standard SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) monitoring
• support for SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer)
• internationalization features that make XCP ready for localization out-of-the-box
• a graphical controller for configuring the Jabber XCP server

The story was announced yesterday, but I still don't see the files available on our support page. So I can't read the more detailed release notes. I am curious as to how much of the XMPP Core and XMPP IM IETF Proposed Standards they comply with.

Sungard, parent of Sungard Bi-Tech the company behind our ERP system IFAS, has announced plans to acquire Collegis, Inc.

Collegis is a leading independent provider of information technology services to the higher education sector. Collegis offers a comprehensive set of solutions to meet the administrative and academic technology needs of colleges and universities, including technology management, ERP implementation, network management, strategic planning, instructional technology, online and academic services and resource development.

Thanks to the help of Jarod Beekman and Darren Flynt, the AWG now has a place to hang their content. I wanted to give you a brief introduction to the services offered as you beging to explore the site. The purpose was to build a collaborative area, taking advantage of the latest blogging technologies so that we might be able to hold discussions and get work accomplished without physically meeting as often. Secondly the site provides a way to communicate research, findings, and architecture to the rest of IMT and APU.

Once you sign up, James Janssen will approve your account and put you into the AWG group, where you will have access to edit collaborative books (see "Documents" above), publish to your own blog, and participate in discussions via the comment system. All content is public, except for the comments, where we can hold discussions.

For more information please read the AWG Website Help Book.

Background

The IMT Cabinet, has requested a change in the way that users reset their passwords. The [current password reset policy], requires heavy interaction with the IMT Support Desk, and is inconvenient for our users. The IMT Cabinet is committed to short term improvements that will enable our long term strategy of Self-Service.

Goal: By Spring II (April) 2004, securely enable a user to self reset their password via üdeupa, after providing sufficient identification credentials electronically.

Password Reset Recomendation Requirements

• Best Practices - found within the Industry, High Ed, and specifically CCCU schools
• Convenience - simple and efficient process for users
• Security - must mitigate risk to an acceptable level
• Privacy - must ensure privacy in accordance with FERPA and other laws
• Simplicity - a simple solution that can be implemented in a short timeframe without infrastructure changes