Delfigo Security - Strong Authentication

What is dynamic authorization management?

"authorization management defines the approaches to centrally manage authorizations in underlying systems. In best case it ends up with the management of specific entitlements (that would really be "Entitlement Management"), in most cases it is only the capability to map users (using roles and so on) to system-level roles or groups or profiles"

However, recognizing the need to close the "big gap in provisioning", Martin Kuppinger of Kuppinger Cole adds the term "dynamic" to describe -

" authorization engines which are used as part of an externalization strategy (externalizing authentication, authorization, auditing and so on from applications) which provide the results of a dynamic authorization decision, according to defined rules, on the fly. "

Gunnar Peterson of the Arctec Group on the difficulty of valuating assets in the digital world:

"Risk management requires that you know your assets .....Unfortunately, in the digital world these turn out to be devilishly hard to identify and value."

"In a world that quite literally presents us with too much information, we need screens to sift out what is worth paying attention to. You can run your vulnerability assessment tool of choice on your system, and come back with hundreds or thousands of vulnerabilities, but which ones should you pay attention to and act on?"

A simple maxim - know your assets. However difficult, it is the starting point for aligning your information security budget with your business. 

Network World features Delfigo solution in "Start-up measures users' trustworthiness for authentication into sites." Key quote:

"Boiled down, Delfigo does context- or risk-based authorization scoring. In other words, the product, DSGateway, calculates, in real time, a risk value - called the "confidence factor" - which reflects the trustworthiness of your authentication in much the same way your credit score reflects your credit worthiness.

Here's how it works, as Klein explained it to me:

a. User signs on with user ID and password.

b. User keyboard biometrics and geospatial data determine "are you who you say you are?"

c. System analyzes current information against user historical profile and assigns a confidence factor (CF).

d. If CF is weak, access is restricted and the user may elect to increase confidence using in-band and out-of-band methods.

e. If confidence factor is sufficient, user is granted access.

The service can continue to monitor the user's activity during the session and if it deviates too far (settable by the administrator) from the user's historical profile a flag can be raised and the user is asked to further authenticate using both in-band and out-of-band methods. Examples of in-band methods could be passwords, tokens, secret questions, keyboard dynamics, while examples of out-of-band methods could be SMS messages.

We've all experienced, I'm sure, services which ask us to periodically re-authenticate, but if the username and password are compromised it really doesn't matter how often the attacker needs to enter them, does it? How much better to use different methods, such as the in-band and out-of-band methods, all the while building up a better level of confidence that the user is who they say they are."

Remember the layoffs of 2001?Those fortunate to keep their jobs were met with a significant increase in their workload.  Not to make lite of the current economy and continued reductions in force, but according to David Griffeth in IAM Insights, here we go again. "The challenge for identity and access management professionals will be securing data from former employees who know the system from the inside out." Not only will IAM professionals have to pick up the slack resulting from reductions in staff, they will need to be aware that over 50% of security breaches come from insiders (or former insiders in  this case).