Many IT security pros are moving toward disruptive new authentication and authorization practices to integrate securely with cloud apps at scale. If you’re considering such a move yourself, check out my new report, The “Venn” of Federated Identity. It describes the potential cost, risk, efficiency, and agility benefits when users can travel around to different apps, reusing the same identity for login.

Aggregate sources of identities are large enough now to attract significant relying-party application “customers” – but the common currency for identity data exchange varies depending on whether the source is an enterprise representing its (current or even former) workforce, a large Web player representing millions of users, or other types of identity providers. These days, the SAML, OAuth, and OpenID technologies are the hard currencies you’ll need to use when you participate in these identity markets. You can use this report to start matching what’s out there to your business scenarios, so you can get going with confidence.