We've found that the best resource for better understanding how to solve employee access management are our customers. So over the past week or so, as a few of our customers have shared details of their OneSign experiences, I thought you may want to hear what some of them are saying and doing...

The stimulus package recently signed by President Obama has been the cause for vigorous debate. One by-product of the package that has not been widely discussed is a provision that would reshape the medical industry by creating a central repository of computerized medical records for all American's. An increase in the level of electronic information of this magnitude exponentially raises the vulnerability of a security breach, which we'll focus on today.

In our last blog posting, we discussed three priorities all organizations should focus on in 2009: security, productivity and manageable IdM projects. Today we're looking more closely at enterprise security.

Happy New Year everyone. Unfortunately for all of us, we enter 2009 facing the reality of an economic recession that affects every industry. Layoffs are rampant, budgets are slashed and businesses are scrambling to weather the economic storm. Faced with these hard realities, it's a good time to regroup and rethink our next steps as we prepare for the eventual upturn.

The discussion on desktop virtualization, or hosted virtual desktop, is heating up. Some view it as futuristic. Others say it is throwback to the world of mainframe computing. With economic concerns forcing businesses to take a hard look at expenses across the enterprise, however, there are many reasons this is such a hot topic.

A recent Gartner Blog Network post and Wall Street Journal article both focus on new, stricter data regulations being passed in several states, including Massachusetts. The final set of the Massachusetts regulations focus on restricting employee access to data, monitoring malicious activity on the network, and strong authentication protocols. The new regulations will go into effect beginning January 1, 2009.

The other week, we announced some findings from a survey conducted over the past couple of months aimed at understanding where authentication and access management sits in the eyes of those concerned with Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standards (DSS). With PCI publishing the latest PCI Data Security Standard 1.2 on Oct. 1, 2008, this online survey highlighted some interesting trends as companies work toward compliance. Here are a few stats to briefly call out...

This week I was part of Network World's second annual real-life scary security stories podcast, a panel hosted by Keith Shaw that told the tales of some frightful security happenings over the past year. There were some amazing examples of breaches of data, corporate espionage and simple access and authentication mis-steps, of which I added a few anecdotes from actual conversations I've had over the past year. [to protect the innocent, actual names were not used]

While the concept of cloud computing (accessing applications online) has been around for close to a decade, talks on the subject have intensified significantly in recent months. The catalysts to these discussions range from the sharp decline in hardware and network infrastructure costs to the desire for a business to 'go green' to the need for accessibly by an increasingly distributed workforce. Whatever the reason, big business has taken notice and as this interest turns into action, these companies must be prepared to look at all of the key issues around this move before taking action.

Strong authentication can come in a variety of forms, each with it's own unique strengths and weaknesses. Before selecting a type of strong authentication, think about the following: