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Enterprise Identity Management on Rails by Brynn Gitt & Oliver Sanford

Your team’s just inked that enterprise deal: 5000 seats at a well-known brand. But wait! Every week 100 people get hired or leave. Soon the customer's HR is complaining to the CEO and their engineers are hacking scripts against your undocumented API. Want to avoid this situation? We did too! Join us and learn how to automate identity management in Rails. We’ll demystify SCIM, peer under the hood of key Ruby auth and identity gems, and share insights to help you anticipate the twists in the road.

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"Brynn Gitt has been working on Ruby on Rails apps for five years. She has a BSE in electrical engineering from the University of Iowa. She is a senior software engineer at Mode (http://mode.com/), and led Mode’s implementation of the SCIM API. Previously, she worked at Academia.edu

Oliver Sanford has been developing Ruby and JavaScript apps for over a decade. He holds a PhD in anthropology from Berkeley and works as a senior software engineer at Mode (http://mode.com/), where he helps enterprises of all sizes understand the stories in their data."

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The video titled "Enterprise Identity Management on Rails" presented by Brynn Gitt and Oliver Sanford at RailsConf 2020 explores the complexities involved in identity management within Ruby on Rails applications, particularly for larger enterprises. It emphasizes the importance of planning identity management strategies from the beginning to avoid challenges such as managing user accounts across multiple organizations and ensuring secure and efficient authentication processes. Here are the key points discussed throughout the presentation:

- **Scope Users to Organizations**: The presenters recommend scoping user accounts to specific organizations to prevent identity management issues that arise when a user belongs to multiple organizations. This includes creating separate accounts for users in different organizations.

- **Enterprise Authentication**: They outline the need for implementing robust authentication methods, highlighting that typical password management is not the focus. Instead, they suggest using multiple authentication services such as Omniauth, emphasizing methods like Single Sign-On (SSO).

- **Understanding Authentication Protocols**: The video discusses various authentication protocols including SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) and SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management), explaining their relevance and application in enterprise-sized deployments.

- **Designing with Integration in Mind**: The importance of considering identity provider integrations, such as Azure Active Directory or Google OAuth, is stressed. Implementing an effective access control system and managing user attributes are key to a successful integration.

- **Edge Cases and Observability**: The presenters share insights on handling edge cases, such as email changes and user deletions, and emphasize the need for observability in logging significant events in the identity management process.

- **Testing and Debugging**: They detail best practices for testing identity management integrations, including using specialized tools and frameworks, as well as practical suggestions for debugging SAML integrations with identity providers like Okta.

- **Implementation Libraries**: Finally, an overview of various libraries and gems available for SCIM and SAML integration is provided, highlighting tools like Skim Kit, Skim Rails, and Skim Engine for developers looking to implement identity management solutions in Rails applications.

In conclusion, the speakers aim to equip developers with practical insights and strategies to create scalable and robust identity management systems in Ruby on Rails, ensuring compliance with enterprise needs and reducing future complexities.

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