ILM 2 : A powerful Identity Management solution

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Microsoft has had been Identity Management via MIIS and ILM 2007.

MIIS – Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003, has been provides various customers a capability to -

    • synchronize the identities across various data sources
    • Synchronize the password
    • user provisioning, de-provisioning, managing users etc.

However, MIIS lacked the workflows, reporting, powerful self-service capabilities that makes Identity Management solution a complete solution.

ILM 2007 provides MIIS capabilities as well as Certificate Lifecycle Management capabilities. Certificate Lifecycle Management allows organizations to -

    • Manage the life cycle of digital certificates and smart cards
    • Centralized administration of certificates and smart cards
    • Workflow and policies for activities -
      • Configurable policy-based workflows for common tasks
      • Enroll/renew/update
      • Recover/card replacement
      • Revoke
      • Retire/disable smart card
      • Issue temporary/duplicate smart card
      • Personalize smart card
    • Self-service capabilities to end-users to reset the PINs, request for above activities
    • auditing and reporting; and
    • Integration with Active Directory Certificate Services.

ILM 2 provides more capabilities than its predecessor. The capabilities of ILM 2 includes -

    • Extensible Windows Workflow Foundation based workflows -
      • allow IT professional to quick create, update and modify the Workflow based on business processes
      • Does not require any languages or coding / scripting.
      • The workflow are based on WF (Windows Workflow Foundation) which enables organizations to import and reuse the workflows
      • Provides WS* APIs to enable customization at product & solution level.

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    • Enforces policies from a centralized Server. The interface is Windows SharePoint Services (WSS).
    • Management of 3rd Party CAs and OTPs.
    • Credential Management using workflows for e.g. automatically provision a user account, set their initial password, and kick off the process to issue smart cards and digital certificates to the user.
    • Powerful Self-Service Password Reset – Allows users to reset the password at Desktop logon. Additionally portal based password reset is also available.
    • Self-service Profile management – allows users to manage their profiles, raise request for additional accounts, access etc.
    • Codeless User Provisioning – Unlike MIIS, ILM 2 does not require writing any codes to perform Identity Management.
    • Group Management – Capability to manage the Security groups, DLs in the target systems
    • Tighter integration with Office -
      • Group Management via Office - Users can use Outlook to raise request for group memberships, DL subscription etc.
      • Offline approvals - The Managers can approve the request on mails instead of logging on to portal and approving the request.

 

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These are few of the capabilities that makes ILM 2 a more powerful solution.

High Level Architecture of ILM 2 is as below -

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In order to understand how ILM 2 works and have a quick peek look at various scenarios, I would attach the Video of my session in recent Virtual Tech Day, in my next post.