What my old wallet has to do with the new Identity Provisioning

Identities can be managed in very different ways, as a glance into one’s own wallet proves – or into one’s own company, into one’s own organization: A jumble of identification systems does not make identity management any easier or more secure. If you want to know how to do it more efficiently, also and especially in the implementation, you should not miss our company blog posts.

I get into my car, want to sit down – and there it is again, the pressure from behind. Not only does my wallet now look extremely unattractive, it also causes me a lot of trouble. The thick, tattered leather case holds a multitude of bills, coins, cards, slips of paper, and identity cards, all of which serve the same purpose: To certify who I am and what I have.However, I have to guard this unsightly piece like gold, a loss would result in considerable financial losses and numerous administrative procedures.

In my head, things don’t look much better when it comes to identity management: I have to remember a heap of PINs, passwords and login procedures, otherwise I won’t be able to access my money or my PC, or even the Internet store that won’t give up its socks unless you open an account with it. None of this is practical, and some doubts about data security in the digital sock-store may be allowed.

We may want to do so…

Unfortunately, in many German companies and public authorities things are similar to what happens in my wallet and my head: There are “grown structures”. In addition to electronic access control, the good old key box still needs to be managed, a password is needed for WiFi, in the canteen people pay with a separate cash card – and when it comes to who is allowed to use which machine and which vehicle, they rely on a secretary who was summarily promoted to identity manager. When it comes to digitization, German public authorities are often far better than their reputation – but that’s not to say that there isn’t still room for improvement in identity management.

Now we all know that lost keys often result in very costly replacement procedures. We know that static passwords are insecure and machines are dangerous in the hands of untrained employees. We know that distributed and unnecessarily duplicated personal data does not make administration any easier.

It is probably not a new insight, that it would actually be more efficient, convenient and secure to finally centralize all identity management. The idea of an integrated digital identity is probably almost as old as digital technology itself.But many people are asking themselves, not without good reason, whether such a radical change in critical processes would not unnecessarily throw a spanner in the works. Many also fear new data protection problems as well as trouble with the workforce and citizens, who always see digital identity as nothing more than “Big Brother”.

… but it’s the implementation that counts

These concerns are absolutely justified. For example, anyone who calculates the enormous effort it would take just to have all the employees of a large company quoted to a photographer for a new company ID card knows what corporate leaders fear. Anyone who knows the GDPR/DSGVO-regulations knows how quickly one becomes liable to prosecution, if one accumulates too extensive personal data.

The devil is – you guessed it – in the details: Identity Provisioning, as we call it, is all about re-connecting what is tried and tested in the right places, replacing what is outdated and replacing what is cumbersome with something more practical. It is important to develop individual solutions without constantly reinventing the wheel.

In our new company blog, we would like to show you step by step how this works, what the benefits are and how to proceed. We will show, for example, how data acquisition can be achieved cost-effectively, how the changeover can be made without interrupting operations, how you can avoid trouble with the DSGVO and the works council, what role AI plays in this – in short: How you can make your company and your processes more secure, more efficient, more competitive and more user-friendly with modern Identity Provisioning.

Here you will find success stories as well as basic opinion and hands-on articles. But of course, a blog also lives from the contributions of our community. Tell us what you’d like to read, what problems you see in terms of identity management, what experiences you’ve had, what solutions you’d like to see.