Providing an Identity and Access Infrastructure

At the core of any mid- or large-sized organization are controls-controls concerning who is allowed to access your organization’s information resources, how you verify someone’s identity, what they’re allowed to do, how you enforce controls, and how you keep records for auditing and for increasing efficiency.

An umbrella name for all this is Identity and Access Management, or IDA. Organizations need an IDA solution that provides services for managing information about users and computers, making information resources available and controlling access to them, simplifying access using single sign-on, ensuring sensitive business information is adequately protected, and safeguarding your information resources as you communicate and exchange information with customers and business partners.

Why is Windows Server 2008 an ideal platform for building your IDA solution? Because it both leverages the basic functionality of Active Directory found in previous Windows Server platforms and includes new features and enhancements to Active Directory in Windows Server 2008. For example, you can now use Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) auditing to maintain a detailed record of changes made to directory objects that records both the new value of an attribute that was changed and its original value. You can leverage the new support for Online Certificate Status Protocol in Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) to streamline the process of managing and distributing revocation status information across your enterprise. You can use several enhancements in Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) together with RMS-enabled applications to help you safeguard your company’s digital information from unauthorized use more easily than was possible using RMS on previous Windows Server platforms. And you can use the integrated Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) role to leverage the industry-supported Web Services (WS-*) protocols to securely exchange information with business partners and provide a single sign-on (SSO) authentication experience for users and applications over the life of an online session.

Want to find out more about these enhancements? Turn to Chapter 7, “Active Directory Enhancements,” to learn about all this and more. And with Windows Vista on the client side, you have added benefits such as an integrated RMS client, improved smart card support, and better integration with SSO and other Active Directory enhancements in Windows Server 2008.