OWASP MSP August 2016 Chapter Meeting

Topic: Practical Identity Access Management: Lessons from the Field

Building Identity Access Management solutions can be difficult. This presentation reviews lessons learned from designing and building IAM solutions in multiple states, focusing on the unique challenges of IAM in government, which must serve the needs of three separate groups: the public, government agencies, and NGOs. Lessons drawn from real-world experiences will demonstrate what works, what doesn’t, and how to fix things when they go wrong.

Following the flow of a typical user’s experience, the presentation will cover the successes, and failures of designing an IAM solution: getting a user ID, logging in to the system, matching “me” as a public user to “my data,” and getting access to the system. Along the way, we will explore lessons about how design choices for each step can impact that experience.

Also covered are designs that were not implemented, sharing the vision of how automated user-driven access requests, changes, and reviews can both improve user experience and lower costs.

Desired Learning Outcomes

This talk will include real-world lessons on:

• Selection of IAM products

• Why people might have 3 (or more) user IDs, and why that’s good

• Single Sign-On protocols, including SAML

• Why controlling usernames is so important, and how usernames can cause problems

• The critical differences between a “user” and a “person”

• What “identity matching” is and how it relates to IAM

• When and how to verify a user’s identity

• How IAM can be used to integrate multiple systems with separate authorization databases

• Managing the costs of public users

John Benninghoff Bio

John Benninghoff has a diverse background in Information Security as an employee and consultant in financial services, retail, and government. John currently leads the Application Security program at a large healthcare company.

John began his information security career when he was asked to build and deploy a Network IDS using free software (SHADOW) after returning from a SANS conference in 1998. John has experience in security policy, program management, identity management, compliance, and application security, and speaks at national and regional security conferences on a variety of topics.