EASI Benefits

By now, the benefits of using a framework to address EASI should be clear. Standards are the best way to maintain application portability and interoperability in the long run. Products and technologies will come and go, but generally accepted security standards for fundamental security services will be much more stable. A standards-based set of security APIs allows you to evolve security products over time without needing to rewrite your applications. Designing your applications for evolving security products is important, because your business requirements and new security technologies will continue to be a moving target. You might pick a great security product that satisfies your needs for now, but you’ll probably want to change at some point as business or market needs change. In addition, you want to avoid being stuck with any one vendor’s product, because the high cost of custom code modification limits your options.

Having a security framework also means that you don’t need to implement everything at once. The framework allows you to start out small by picking the security services you need, and builds up more sophisticated security functionality when and if it’s required. The framework gives you a road map for your security architecture, helping to guide you on how to pick products and technologies that match your needs over time.

Finally, the framework puts the security focus where it should be: on building a common infrastructure that can be shared across the enterprise. Custom-built security that is hand-coded within applications is expensive to implement and maintain, and is likely to have more security vulnerabilities. A single security infrastructure with APIs that can be used by all of your applications avoids multiple, duplicate definitions of users, security attributes, and other policies. You can focus your limited time and money on building up a few critical interoperable security technologies, rather than coping with a mass of unrelated security products that will never work together.