Benefits of a standard authorization service

A standard authorization service offers several benefits over an assortment of proprietary authorization implementations. Benefits can include reduced development cost and the ability to share information securely.

Authorization in most systems, both existing and new, is tightly coupled to individual applications. Companies typically build applications over time to serve their business needs. Many of these applications require some specific form of authorization.

The result is often a wide variety of applications with differing authorization implementations. These proprietary authorization implementations require separate administration, are difficult to integrate, and result in higher costs of ownership. A distributed authorization service can provide these independent applications with a standard authorization decision-making mechanism. Benefits of such a standard authorization service include:

• Reduced cost of developing and managing access to applications
• Reduced total cost of ownership and management of separate authorization systems
• Use the existing security infrastructure
• Allow new businesses to open applications more securely
• Enable newer and different kinds of applications
• Allow shorter development cycles
• Share information securely

Parent topic: Authorization: conceptual model