Assurances in Identity

New FIM 2010 Rollup Hotfix Package (4.0.3573.2) has been released.

2011-02-02T07:38:00.001-08:00

A new FIM 2010 rollup hotfix has been released by Microsoft, bringing the current version of FIM to 4.0.3573.2. The information can be found here: KB 2417774. This is the same KB article for version 4.0.3561.2, building upon it.

It's a little difficult to tease out what is new to version 4.0.3573.2, but one feature definitely is. A new asynchronous export mode for FIM MA that can be enabled for initial load operations promises to significantly cut down on the amount of time required for exports to the FIM service. I'm looking forward to seeing how well this optimizes the export process.

More information in the KB article!

Year 2 as Identity Lifecycle Manager MVP

2010-07-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

I received word on July 1st, i.e. Canada Day (great timing), that I have been awarded the 2010 MVP award. Many thanks to the community and Microsoft for the recognition.

Has Forefront Identity Manager 2010 RTM'ed? Yes it has!

2010-03-02T05:48:00.000-08:00

Looks like FIM 2010 may have RTM'ed! A new evaluation version is now available from Microsoft. Find it here:

Microsoft® Forefront™ Identity Manager 2010 Evaluation Version

[Update] It looks like Microsoft made the announcement at the 2010 RSA Conference in San Francisco today. For more information, please visit:

RSA Conference 2010: Identity at the Forefront

ILM 2007 FP1 Service Pack 1 has been released

2010-01-27T11:27:00.001-08:00

Microsoft has just released Service Pack 1 for Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM) 2007 FP1. The big new feature with this release is support for provisioning to Exchange 2010.

You can find more information on Identity Management.

You can find SP1 on the Microsoft Support site.

Forefront Identity Manager 2010 RC1 Demo VHD Released

2009-11-10T05:46:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has released a Hyper-V based demo of FIM 2010 RC1 Demo. You can find it here:

Forefront(TM) Identity Manager 2010 RC1 Demo Virtual Hard Disk Image

Props to Jorge over at Jorge 's Quest For Knowledge! for finding the link!

PowerShell 2.0 for Windows XP, Vista, 2003 and 2008

2009-10-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

For those of you waiting to get the features available in PowerShell 2.0 (originally released with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2), your time has come.

Microsoft has just released the Windows Management Framework, which includes:

Windows PowerShell 2.0
Windows Remote Management (WinRM) 2.0
Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) 4.0

Lots of good stuff in there, so go take a look!

Windows Management Framework on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008

ADFS 2.0 passes SAML 2.0 interoperability tests

2009-10-01T06:11:00.000-07:00

You may not have noticed this in my previous posting, but ADFS 2.0 (formerly known as 'Geneva') has passed the Liberty Alliance SAML 2.0 Interoperability Testing, which means ADFS 2.0 can interoperate with heterogeneous environments and provide federation.

You can find more information on the 'Geneva' Team Blog and on the Liberty Alliance Project site.

FIM 2010 RC1 is available for download!

2009-09-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

Forefront Identity Manager 2010 RC1 has been released! The announcement can be found here:

MSFT Identity and Access news: Forefront Identity Manager RC1 and ADFS 2.0 SAML interoperability

You can find the download bits here:

Forefront™ Identity Manager 2010 Release Candidate 1

Fall has arrived...

2009-09-28T17:49:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been awhile since my last posting. Since that time, summer has come and gone and we're now into the Fall season.

Summer was quite busy. Back in July, I received the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award. I'd like to thank David Lundell, over at ILM Best Practice, for his nomination. I'm quite honoured to have received the award.

I've worked on a number of ILM 2007 projects, both on the Certificate Management side as well as Identity Synchronization. A few of them are still on-going, keeping me very busy. One project involves FIM 2010; I'm quite keen to get my hands on RC1 to see what Microsoft has been working on for the last several months. It shouldn't be long now before it's released, if Microsoft holds to the Q3 2009 deadline.

Introducing Forefront Identity Manager 2010

2009-04-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

It's official! Microsoft has finally settled on a name for ILM '2': Forefront Identity Manager 2010 or FIM for short.

Check out its new home: Microsoft Forefront: Identity Manager 2010.

If you're interested, Brad Turner over at 1dent1ty cHa0s has a brief perspective on FIM's lineage.

And if you haven't already heard, or figured it out, the target release date is Q1 2010.

Internet Access to Shared Service

2009-03-19T06:20:00.000-07:00

Michael Wittenburg, a colleague with MCS - UK, recently sent through a link to a case study of a project I was involved in with him. The Internet Access to Shared Service (IASS) project aimed to provide the UK Ministry of Defence with secure remote access to its line-of-business applications.

You can find the case study here: Case Study - The Ministry of Defence. The IASS solution used combination of multiple products to enable the secure remote access, including:

Microsoft Active Directory Directory Services
Microsoft Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG)
Microsoft .NET Framework
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006
Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager 2007 FP1 (ILM)
Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006
Gemalto Chip & PIN (EMV) .Net Smart cards

I spent quite a few weeks at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Reading, UK working with folks from MCS, Capgemini and other partners to put together this solution. My role was to implement the smart card management and identity synchronization bits, using the ILM Certificate Management solution to manage the Gemalto EMV smart cards and the ILM Identity Synchronization solution to manage the users, provisioning and deprovisioning them from CLM and the UK Government Gateway. Getting all of this to work was quite interesting and a bit of a challenge, working around the various products' idiosyncrasies. However, with a little bit of customization work using the CLM APIs, the project was a success. Have a look at the case study to get more details.

Also, once again, a big thank you to all the guys involved at the MTC: Paul Thomas, David Hoyle, Michael Wittenburg, Mark Allen, Sam Mannix, Diarmuid Curtin, David Chaudry and Adrian Castiallo, to name a few. It was a real pleasure working and having a few pints with you guys.

ILM 2007 Certificate Management Customizations

2009-03-17T10:46:00.000-07:00

ILM 2007, through its Certificate Management solution, or Certificate Lifecycle Manager (CLM) as it used to be known, allows an organization to manage credentials within their Windows Server 2003 and 2008 certification authorities. It acts like an administrative proxy, allowing you issue and manage digital certificates and smartcards through a web interface.

The solution provides three different APIs (i.e. Provision, SQL and Notification) and a number of customizable interfaces, all of which allow you to customize CLM. This gives you the ability to greatly extend and expand the product's capabilities. For an overview of these APIs and interfaces, have a look at the Certificate Lifecycle Manager Overview on MSDN.

Over the next few postings, I'll be looking at these APIs and interfaces in greater detail, to show you how they work and how they could be put to use in your CLM deployment.

And I'd like to add a quick shout-out to David Lundell, over at ILM Best Practices, for getting on my case and getting this blog up and running. Thanks!