Editor’s Note

Heather Flanagan, Principal Editor of the IDPro Body of Knowledge

© 2021 IDPro

With every new issue, IDPro and its community of IAM practitioners take another step towards a world where IAM is a recognized and respected field that is accessible to all. The IDPro Body of Knowledge (BoK) is becoming the resource where individuals just starting their career can find resources to support their efforts to learn more about the complexities of IAM, and where practitioners with more than a few years in the field can stay on top of the evolution in the industry.

Issue 4 is the first issue to directly feel the impact of the IDPro Certification program . Several of the articles approved for publication were written because the IDPro Certification Committee was unable to find vendor-neutral, peer-reviewed, readily available articles for certain topics. Where Issues 1 through 3 had more high-level, general articles, Issue 4 starts to add more technical depth to what is available in the IDPro BoK. We need that breadth of information, because that’s what the IAM industry needs: this industry has architects, line staff, developers, consultants, executives, and so much more. The IDPro BoK wants to be a resource for the entire industry.

In this issue, we look at IAM from the customer service side of the house in “Managing Identity in Customer Service Operations” by Arynn Crow, Senior Technical Program Manager, AWS Identity, and Jp Rowan, Staff Solutions Architect, Auth0. We also look at the concept of identity federation from the perspective of the Enterprise in “Federation in the Enterprise” by Patrick Lunney, Product Owner - Single Sign-On & Multi Factor Authentication at Capital One. Mary McKee, Director of Identity Management and Security Services at Duke University, offers a view into the complex world of access control models in “Policy-Based Access Control.” Last but definitely not least, Dean H. Saxe, Sr. Security Engineer at Amazon Web Services, offers guidance on a universal challenge within IAM, “Account Recovery.”

We’re already looking at what might be in the next issue, and volunteers are already hard at work pulling together potential material. Articles range from how to be aware of bias in identity systems, how context plays a huge role in IAM architecture and operations, and so much more. Of course, everything must go through a full review process, which includes peer review by other IAM practitioners as well as IDPro Board and BoK Committee review. We are committed to creating the best open resource for the community, and as always, new authors and reviewers are always welcome; please reach out to editor@idpro.org if you would like to participate in the process of creating the IDPro Body of Knowledge!