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Opinion
The Case for Identity Management
8/28/2006
Common-Sense Security-Event Costs
What is the cost of a “security event?” Since they can negatively impact an institution in a variety of ways, the costs go beyond the dollar amount required to fix a server or eradicate a computer virus. Components of the institutional cost may include:
- Response costs. The costs to bring the institution’s operational processes back to normal; for example, the person-hours to eradicate a computer virus.
- Recovery costs. The costs to bring the institution’s IT resources back to normal; for example, the cost of removing a rootkit from a server.
- Lost revenue. Revenue that is lost to the institution, such as tuition from reduced student enrollment, lost grant funding, or a reduction in donations resulting from damage to reputation.
- Lost productivity. The cost of staff and faculty idle time while IT recovers from an event.
- Penalties. The cost of penalties, such as those incurred by non-compliance with privacy legislation.
- Perception costs. The long-term costs to counter a negative perception or repair a damaged reputation, including public relations and marketing costs.
Evaluating and prioritizing these costs will go a long way toward developing the right IdM strategy for your own institution.
Community Benefits
Beyond averting an individual institution’s security-event costs, IdM offers other potential benefits to higher education at a community level. In particular, federated IdM allows a user who has been authenticated at the campus level to access resources on other campuses through a trust fabric. Shibboleth is a national higher ed initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation and facilitated by Internet2, to implement a single sign-on federated IdM infrastructure. Shibboleth uses the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization information across multiple security domains.
Whether you’re focused on your own institution’s security initiatives, or on weaving them into the community fabric of a federated infrastructure, developing a successful IdM strategy is a key concern now and for the future. Don’t wait for a security event to bring your IdM needs to light – it’ll cost you!
Doug Gale is president of Information Technology Associates, LLC, an IT consultancy specializing in higher education. He has more than 30 years of experience in higher education as a faculty member, CIO, and research administrator.
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