Businesses face many password management challenges. Implementing a password management solution is necessary in many corporate environments because users have to authenticate to the network in a secure manner. Passwords are the most common authentication mechanism. From a deployment perspective, passwords are the simplest and cheapest authentication technique.
With this in mind, having a poor password management policy in an enterprise environment can compromise enterprise security and make the enterprise vulnerable to outside attack from malicious threats. In organizations with poor password management practices, one or more of the following issues is typically present:
- Weak and easily breakable passwords.
- Passwords that users are not required to change often enough, which means that attackers can compromise the passwords through force and cryptographic attacks.
- Passwords that have been written down, which can be easily compromised.
- Numerous calls to the Help desk for password resets, which can result in increased operational costs.
- Users who have too many passwords, which can result in password overload. With so many passwords for users to remember, they have difficulty managing passwords securely.
To meet these challenges, businesses should find an appropriate solution to address their password management requirements.
- Business Solutions for Password Management
Businesses can adopt various solutions to solve password management challenges. For example, users can change their passwords on each connected data directory by logging on to each directory interactively, and then changing the password natively in the connected data store. Although this is a typical solution, users can easily become confused and frustrated if they cannot remember which password they used for any of the connected data stores.
- Event-driven password management application
An event-driven password management application, such as the one in MIM 2016, is a more viable solution to these password management challenges. MIM 2016 users change their passwords from their desks in an authoritative connected data source. Then, a service in the authoritative connected source captures the password change requests and pushes the newly changed password to other configured connected data sources in real time. This solution is cost-effective and efficient because users do not have to manually change passwords for each connected data source to match the password of the authoritative connected data source. Also, when they initiate password changes, those changes are effective immediately.
- Automated Password Synchronization Solution
Automated password synchronization synchronizes passwords only between existing accounts on connected data sources that have management agents that support the password synchronization option. During automated password synchronization, a user makes a password change in an authoritative connected data source. The newly updated password is automatically captured from the authoritative data source during the password change process, and then distributed to configured, connected data sources in MIM 2016.
MIM 2016 uses the domain name to locate the management agent that services that domain, and then uses the user account information in the password change request to locate the corresponding object in the connector space. Then the tool uses the join information to determine which management agents should receive the password change request, and if they are enabled for password synchronization. Password synchronization is initiated, and then the updated password is sent to the configured data sources. The automated password synchronization solution for MIM 2016 addresses the password management needs of many enterprises in a real time!
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