When embarking on identity and access management (IAM) architecture and development efforts, the initial phases often churn through finding the “right” standard or protocol to use. Should the project use OpenID or SAML or IWA or something else altogether? While its important to sort through the tradeoffs and design considerations (after all the Cloud Security Alliance alone mentions 27 different identity standards!), selecting Identity protocols and standards is the beginning not the end.

The critical next steps include a plan for integrating the selected identity protocol and standards into the overall application. This step causes way more stumbling than it should. By now, we should know that there are no silver bullets in infosec. But even today, enterprises write RFIs and RFPs that hone in on support for a specific standard and yet gloss over the importance of integration. Here Architecture astronauts talk identity strategy, but pros talk identity integration logistics