About the Writer:
Steve Giovannetti is CTO of Hub City Media, Inc., a company that specializes in implementation and product development on the Oracle Identity Management platform.

Recently, Hub City Media announced the introduction of iPad application IdentityCert for Oracle Identity Analytics. This post explore the business use cases and application of IdentityCert.


Hub City Media(HCM) has been deploying certification solutions based on Oracle Identity Analytics since it first appeared on the market as Vaau RBACx. With each deployment we've seen the same pattern repeat time and time again:

1. Customers suffering under the weight of manual access certification regimens deploy Oracle Identity Analytics (OIA) for automated certification.
2. OIA improves the frequency, speed, accuracy, and participation of certifications across the organization.
3. Then the certifiers, typically managers and supervisors, ask, “Is there any easier way to do these certifications offline?”

The current version of OIA has a way to export certification data to a spreadsheet.  For some customers, we've leveraged this feature and combined it with some of our own custom code to provide a solution based on spreadsheet exports and imports.  Customers export the certification to Microsoft Excel, complete it, and then import the spreadsheet to OIA. It worked well for offline certification, but if the user accidentally altered the format of the spreadsheet, the import of the data could fail. We were close to a solution but it wasn’t reliable.

Over the past few years, we've seen the proliferation of Apple iOS devices, specifically the iPhone and iPad, in the enterprise.  As our customers were asking for offline certification, we noticed the same population of users traditionally responsible for access certification, were early adopters of the iPad. The environment seemed ideal for us to create an iPad application to support offline certifications using Oracle Identity Analytics. That’s why we created IdentityCert™.

IdentityCert allows users to view their analytics dashboard, complete user certifications, and resolve policy violations with OIA, from their iPads.

The current IdentityCert analytics dashboard displays the same charts that are available in the Oracle Identity Analytics product. However, we plan to expand the number of available analytics in future releases.



The main function of IdentityCert is user certification which can be performed quickly and efficiently using a simple touch interface. Managers tap into a certification, use simple gestures to claim users and certify their access.  Certifications can be securely downloaded to IdentityCert and can be completed with or without a network connection. The user can upload the completed certifications once they are connected to a cellular or wi-fi network.



Oracle Identity Analytics can generate policy violation notifications based on detective scans of identity warehouse or via preventative analysis of identity access requests. IdentityCert allows users to view all policy violations, resolve, or delegate them to appropriate users. IdentityCert also analyzes the policy violation expression and produces more human friendly descriptions of the policy violation which improves the ability of users to resolve the violation.

IdentityCert can be deployed quickly into a customer's environment. It is deployed with Hub City Media's ID Services to connect Oracle Identity Analytics securely with the iPad application.

Oracle Identity Management 11g R2 is an important evolutionary release. Oracle's Identity Management suite has more characteristics of a cohesive platform. This platform provides an integrated set of identity services that can be used to protect, manage, and audit security within the enterprise. At HCM we take the platform concept a step further and see it as an opportunity to create unique solutions for Oracle Identity Management customers. IdentityCert is our commitment to this platform.

You can download IdentityCert from the Apple iOS App Store today. It includes a demo dataset that you can use to explore the functions of the product without any server infrastructure. Download it. Give it a try. We would appreciate your interest and welcome any feedback.

Resources:
Press Release: Hub City Media Introduces iPad Application IdentityCert™ for Oracle Identity Analytics
App Store Download: http://bit.ly/IdentityCert
Oracle Identity Governance Suite