Interesting editorial by Jon Oltsik about the renewed interest in enterprise access control systems. Jon’s point is well taken - if you do business with suppliers, contractors, offshore workers, and customers, you should have in place a system allowing access to electronic resources based on the user’s needs. No longer is a single username and password giving access to the whole resource acceptable.

If you want to let outsiders–that is, customers, offshore developers,
suppliers and so on–use applications to boost productivity, you had
better know who they are, define what they can do and watch every move
they make.

[Via CNET News.com -]