The Importance of Identity

The use of identity has changed radically over the past 10 years. Twenty-five years ago, as I started my first job as a (trainee) VAX/VMS systems administrator at Logica in their financial group as a fresh-faced 18-year-old, I had visions of amazing computers and systems that only Star Trek had seen, I was saddened as I sat in front of my VT220 and its green glow. My PC at home was better than this! I would discover better machines down in the basement (where I went frequently to change backup tapes and fetch printouts for developers) that were the systems I would connect to via my VT. I was given an account that worked for all the servers in the basement and for the mail application that ran on the environment as well for local team type communications. A few years later, we started to get Windows machines, a separate logon for the corporate email system, and, eventually, a domain. Therefore, I had a few different logons for the systems within Logica but over...