The Identity of Things (IDoT)

Authors

Gary Rowe – CEO/Principal Consulting Analyst

John Myracle – Principal Consulting Analyst

Doug Simmons – Principal Consulting Analyst

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is impacting businesses, society, culture, and individuals in ways we are yet to fully understand. A world that ties connected physical devices and services to individuals and enterprises is quickly approaching us. Ecosystems are being built to better govern, manage, secure and integrate IoT to support a diverse set of use cases. The foundation for this emerging and pervasive IoT ecosystem requires scalable methods for determining how devices and data generated by these devices are identified, secured and accessed.

This has led to the development of a new category of Identity and Access Management (IAM) called the IDentity of Things (IDoT) that supports the unique scalability, relationships, context, consent and identification of IoT devices. IDoT services must also support authenticating various forms of hardware identifiers associated with IoT devices. Since most traditional IAM vendors are in the early stages of fully supporting this category, enterprises are initially identifying and managing IoT devices by leveraging cloud and platform providers with IoT extensions as well as emerging ecosystems built around major IoT hardware providers. We’ll examine both these tactical silo-based approaches as well as how traditional IAM vendors are evolving to support IDoT.

We also describe a framework for developing an enterprise IDoT strategy and roadmap leveraging TechVision’s IAM Reference Architecture as a foundation. This report starts by assessing the impact of IoT on the enterprise, describes this new class of IAM services and concludes with a set of pragmatic recommendations and an enterprise action plan.