In my last update from the CIO  I gave a quick overview of Identity and Access Management (IAM).  We have now contracted with Fischer International for Identity and Access Management services.  Throughout 2012, this decision will have an increasing impact on all of our daily computing lives.  You will hear and read more and more references to your “HMC Credentials”, which will be a username and password derived from your current Charlie or Alice passwords (Active Directory).  We will stop referring to credentials that are specific to an application, such as “your Zimbra username and password”.   Eventually, your HMC Credentials will be the only credentials you need to access most services; moreover, you will see a “single sign on” ecology begin to emerge:  once you’ve logged in to one service, you typically will not have to provide credentials for the next service you visit.  For example, you would log on to your computer in the morning and then visit Sakai, which would recognize that you have already authenticated and not ask you for your credentials a second time. Ditto when you visit email (including Google Apps) after you’ve logged into Sakai or the Portal.  And so on.

The IAM @ HMC initiative will also bring you a web interface to reset your password for your HMC credentials.