Identity Management (IDM) is a process of managing identities and their accesses to specific resources in the cyberspace. It ensures appropriate access in appropriate time and helps to manage user accounts as well as to synchronize data.
Example
When a new employee is hired, he gets his user account in the company. In this account not only the information about himself is stored, but also information related to permissions for this user or his group and role membership. The aim of identity management is the management of the user accounts, so the users are assigned to correct groups, they have correct roles as well as permissions they are supposed to get.
Identity management can be used to manage identities such as employees, students, customers, business partners or suppliers and finds its usage in various markets. Therefore the identity became a new perimeter of security. In the past, the private nets of companies were isolated from the Internet and connected just through a safe point. This stopped to be effective as people started to use notebooks or phones altogether with Internet. The security perimeter can be replaced with Identity Management, by which we can manage who has the access to specific resources.