Identity & Access Management: A Systems Engineering Approach

The book is a powerful, novel approach to the analysis and synthesis of IAM systems. It is motivated by the realization that the current practice of Information Systems in general, and Identity and Access Management in particular, is increasingly divorced from its Systems Engineering underpinnings. Even for the most innovative and resourceful practitioners, the architecture, design, implementation and support of enterprise Information Technology systems has taken a complex inferential approach, driven by algorithmic and rule based protocols and standards. This work creates a solid foundation for IAM by using established concepts from Systems Engineering, using systems representations for major IAM processes like authentication and authorization. Such systems formulations may then be used to analyze IAM systems in complicated organizations using established Systems Engineering methods. For example, the book shows that problems in IAM such as risk propagation and authentication processes that were heretofore analyzed in terms of prescriptive, algorithmic or empirical schemes, are indeed amenable to general theoretical treatment. The book is specifically designed to be accessible to the general IT practitioner. It is with this goal in mind that it teases out the concepts in a way that anyone with some college education will be able to understand.