Computer Integrated Services: Creating Smart Solutions for a Connected World

Robert Rawson | Chief Identity & Access Officer | Computer Integrated Services
Robert Rawson | Chief Identity & Access Officer | Computer Integrated Services

The conventional methods of access, authorization, and authentication are in transition. Enterprise IT environments are getting larger and more complex. Regulatory requirements are a mounting challenge.

Meanwhile, SaaS is enabling individual lines of business to implement their own solutions without the participation of IT. Often these self-administered systems become business critical parts of the infrastructure. Ultimately, IT will be held accountable for the operational fidelity and security of those. Over time, this can spiral into a death of a thousand papercuts.

Computer Integrated Services’ Identity Management (IDM) team offers unparalleled expertise in creating the infrastructure that will unify administration, automate and audit identity life cycles. It can codify provisioning, governance and authentication processes across heterogeneous platforms while augmenting security through a variety of Identity and Access Management solutions for both on and off-premises applications.

A System Integrator

Computer Integrated Services started as a systems integrator servicing the Tristate New York area in 1995. CIS has since expanded its breadth and depth to providing world-class consulting services to over 300 clients across North America and beyond.

On the strength of its IAM team, CIS has become one of the preeminent Identity and Access Governance specialty practices in the world. It’s Co-founder and President, Todd Hershman personally oversees this business unit in conjunction with Robert Rawson, CIS’ Chief Identity Access Officer. Justin Tuchman, Senior Sales Executive, has vast experience and success in the IDM space at CIS for well over a decade, working closely with our large enterprise clients.

Expanding Footprints

CIS’ consulting arm creates and enhances Identity and Access Governance solutions for its clients which leverage several different vendor product lines. The company has delivered solutions working with a single vendor suite or a mixture of products whether newly deployed or incumbent.

One of the challenges it has seen in the marketplace is that the knowledge and expertise in identity technologies can be challenging to find. This limits both the decision to deploy solutions as well as how much those solutions can expand their footprint within the enterprise, limiting their value. In vesting in staff can be both difficult and risky. The company’s CIS-MIAMI™ brand (CIS-Managed Identity and Access Mangement Infrastrucures) is a collection of managed service offerings suitable to provide value to clients with many different levels of identity sophistication.

Services like “CIS-MIAMI™ Monitor” provide tools to watch not only what the IDM infrastructure is doing but also connected system failures that might be impeding integrations. “CIS-MIAMI™ Run” is a tiered managed service that can provide cost-certain vendor-independent direct support or escalation services to your organization. Other offerings include “CISMIAMI™ Update” which monitors your versions to report on your product’s vendor support horizon and “CIS-MIAMI™ Consult” to lend expertise to decisionmakers in the space.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are emerging in products in the Identity space. There can be tremendous advantages, especially within larger enterprises, to help distinguish bad actors from a large field of good ones, to identify and leverage the natural collaborative trends which transcend formal organizations, and to help navigate a growing regulatory landscape. Computer Integrated Services feels that as these products mature more applications of them will become more clearly defined for businesses large and small.

Exhibiting Seamless Quality

CIS thrives on its customer’s success. Within the identity space, it sees how identity technologies are going well beyond their original vision of automation of IT business processes, authentication, and compliance. The indirect effect that codification of processes has on security and auditability creates a significant appeal to the implementation of identity infrastructure.

To support that well, the solutions must embrace the integration of not only the personnel and how they are organized, but also to have dynamically updated information about what each user both is, and could be, entitled to. With IT GOAT leading the way in access management, these elements can be seamlessly brought together, making it possible to leverage Roles as the organizing principle of access, easily separate the outliers, and reduce the complexity of auditing for compliance.

To get the most out of your technological investments, they should be configured to leverage the synergies which naturally occur. Integrating provisioning with governance and using that to provision, monitor, implement and rescind access at the user or entitlement level is an example of how these individual technological silos can interoperate providing more value than anyone of them alone.

The company’s goal is to make deep and tight integrations such as these the standard for how applications, systems, and things are granted to users, secured in their operation, and recovered from separated individuals, while also easily managing throughout their relationship whether that the user has what they need to do their job and no more.

In terms of disaster preparedness, CIS has always been ahead of the curve. During 9/11, when downtown Manhattan was shut down, the CIS wholly-owned data center in Netcong NJ supported our client base throughout a protracted crisis. CIS was featured in a cover story in Computer Reseller News for our forethought and vision. While many companies went out of business or were significantly affected, CIS clients-maintained business continuity.

Embracing Cloud Technology

As for today’s pandemic, CIS continued forward-thinking has kept the wheels of commerce turning. Like most organizations, it has moved beyond maintaining its datacenter and embraced the cloud. Leveraging its experience, it has been able to continue to provide world-class support, keeping projects moving forward, accommodate changing priorities, and schedules as a result of the pandemic.

A Thought Leader

CIS’ Identity Practice is led by Rob Rawson. Rob has been with CIS for over 15 years and has experience in development, systems architecture, and engineering, as well as his focus on identity consulting, and product management. He has led several top-notch consulting teams both before and at CIS. Rob’s been working with identity management from its earliest incarnations. He has a worldwide reputation as a thought leader in this space.

“In our clients, identity forms the sinew of integrated solutions. Our focus is on leveraging quality identity management infrastructures and using their feature sets to the maximum advantage, while not limiting ourselves by what is available out of the box. It is the best mixture of delivered and designed functionality.” – Rob Rawson

Ascending Zeniths

CIS has been recognized for 3 years running as a topten Identity and Access Management solutions provider in North America. CIS also prides itself on cultivating long-term mutually beneficial relationships with its clients. As a result, of living and breathing that philosophy, CIS has had relationships with dozens of its clients for over two decades.

CIS has a team of widely recognized thought leaders in the Identity solutions space. Multiple resources have been identified by vendors as being among the top knowledge partners in their product category.

Website: https://cisus.com/