As Information Technology (IT) continues to increase in complexity, many organizations are struggling with the management headaches associated with an overabundance of application-specific user accounts. This problem is complicated by today?s mobile workforce and the need to access critical information anywhere, and anytime. External threats such as malware, phishing, and vishing create an environment where proper selection of Identity Management solutions is critical. Organizations are now working to establish unified, robust, and enterprise-wide user authentication frameworks to enable streamlined access without compromising the security that more sensitive applications and data demand.

BruckEdwards helps our customers deploy Identity Management solutions that result in significant operational and business process improvement. Our full lifecycle Identity Management practice is focused on solving difficult enterprise issues associated with user registration, credentialing, authentication, and authorization to physical and logical assets.

This background enables us to assist our customers with the selection and implementation of the technologies that best fit their needs through the following service offerings:

Strategic Planning Services

• Best Practices Analysis – BruckEdwards has significant experience supporting best practices engagements for high profile government clients. We leverage our full lifecycle understanding of Identity Management to support a collaborative benchmarking process that provides our clients with insight into numerous other organizations that share similar Identity Management challenges.

• Analysis of federal E-authentication policy and guidelines –The BruckEdwards team has extensive experience with federal E-Authentication policy, guidelines, and technical standards. We have conducted in depth analyses of these standards to support client efforts to develop cutting edge solutions that maximize user adoption and are compliant with federal standards.

• Risk Analysis and Application Assurance Level Determination – Effective Identity Management solutions demonstrate a balance between usability and security. This balance is the key to maximizing user adoption and return on investment. BruckEdwards provides risk assessment and policy support to assist clients with the identification of the core application and data security requirements that drive the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) assurance level determination. We also assist clients with developing a repeatable risk measurement methodology that can be used on an enterprise-wide basis to streamline to Identity Management enabling process.

Systems Design

• Concept of Operations and Cost Modeling– Cost modeling is a vital part of the planning process and enables Identity Management decision makers to forecast the anticipated costs of the program, and to develop a clear and defendable spending plan that can be used to establish the necessary future budget placeholders. It also enables system designers to understand the cost impact?in terms of technology costs and staffing?of core system parameters. As a result, designers are able to isolate the sources of system lifecycle costs, and optimize these based on the anticipated service improvement to justify moving ahead. BruckEdwards brings significant direct experience with developing enterprise cost models and spending plans. We have developed enterprise cost models for the Department of Justice, Social Security Administration, and the IJIS Institute.

• Authentication Token Analysis– Identity Management is often structured to support one or more specialized user communities and their respective business processes. Addressing the needs of different user communities requires an understanding of usability, security, and available access methods to balance security and simplicity for maximum adoption. BruckEdwards provides vendor-neutral technology evaluation services to help clients to successfully navigate and integrate these technologies into a unified and cohesive Identity Management solution. Our methodology streamlines the vendor evaluation process to ensure that the selection is made based on functional and technical analyses and that the system is compatible with the client?s existing environment/standards.

• Registration and Credentialing Workflow Development– BruckEdwards has significant direct experience developing the standard operating procedures and workflow processes for Identity Management systems to ensure that claimed identities are properly vetted before any credential is issued. Workflow artifacts include not only cross functional flow diagrams but also their associated business process logic and error handling.

• Identity Verification– BruckEdwards understands that in many cases, real time registration can be a critical usability factor. BruckEdwards helps clients to identify key requirements for knowledge-based user identity validation and how these requirements can be integrated with existing credentialing systems.

• External Credential Service Providers– In some cases, a make-buy analysis will indicate that leveraging an existing credential makes more sense than creating a new one. BruckEdwards helps clients assess external Credential Service Providers? (CSP) processes against federal requirements as codified by Office of Management and Budget (OMB), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and General Services Administration (GSA). This is a critical step in breaking down traditional IT barriers and accepting identity credentials from external partners.

• Role-Based Access Control– Today, standards based portal solutions offer organizations and communities the ability to seamlessly access information across organizational boundaries with a single user authentication transaction. This method can be easily combined with other technologies such as smart cards and biometrics to provide more granular and secure implementations when needed.

• Performance Testing– BruckEdwards has significant direct experience with the development and application of Identity Management performance benchmarking tools. These are particularly important in environments where system uptime and response time are critical measures of success. BruckEdwards staff has developed robust tools that can generate millions of ?synthetic? transactions per day against target systems. We use these tools to simulate anticipated production workloads, validate vendor claims, and load test systems prior to production operation.

Operations and Maintenance

We combine strong Identity Management domain expertise and direct experience with identity verification and credentialing system operation with a core philosophy of continual process improvement to deliver cost effective and highly reliable operations services. We measure our performance using our internally developed operations metrics and partner with our customers to improve operational performance and lower costs.