Re: SECURITY Digest - 2 Nov 2009 to 3 Nov 2009 (#2009-251)

["Mark I. Berman" <Mark.Berman () MCLA EDU>]

As people have stated, the reasons for moving from e-directory to AD have
to do with integration and standardization rather than security and TCO.
My personal opinion is that you can't justify the move on the basis of
security and/or TCO becuase AD is not as secure and will have a higher
long term TCO. I'm on my second institution running e-dir as the primary
directory store and it has much better security features, is easier to
manage (although familiarity could have something to do with that), and it
just runs. At my previous institution we brought up a parallel AD
environment synced with Novell Identity Management services and the sync
ran very well. Even with that there were things about the design of AD
that made it more complex to manage. I recognize that AD is taking over
and that we'll have no choice but to migrate at some point but I feel the
same way about this that I did about the migration from VMS to Unix and
Windows: we're abandoning a technically better system because the
marketplace is forcing us to. The winner is always the best marketer not
the best engineer.

 - Mark
--
Mark Berman, Chief Information Officer
MCLA - Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
375 Church Street, North Adams, MA. 01247
413-662-5062

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The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv         
<SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU> on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 at 1:00
AM -0500 wrote:
> From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv
> [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Christopher Jones
> Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 1:03 PM
> To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
> Subject: [SECURITY] Justifying the move from Novell to AD
>
> =20
>
> We're in the process of planning a migration from Novell to AD.  We
> currently are building a business case for implementing AD.  For those
> of you who have recently completed a Novell to AD migration, I would
> appreciate any information/documentation you may have used to support
> the decision, particularly from a security and TCO standpoint.  Thanks.
>
> =20
>
> Christopher Jones
>
> IT Security Administrator
>
> University of the Fraser Valley