Enforcement - A New Metaphor?

So I was talking with my buddy Ian Glazer again today and we were discussing the Identity Management space and how the products out there from Sun, Novell, and IBM and others are a kind of policy management or process management tool. They auotmate the process of adding, modifying and deleting users. They will be as effective as the policies and processes behind them. Kind of like Congress or even a State legislature. Just like these institutions exist, the cops are the enforcers of the laws (policies) set up by the governing bodies who set them up.

So we were talking about Trusted Network Technology's offering in the context of really being the enforcer. It is a level 2 device that looks at packet data as they flow across the network and permits or denies access to resources if the policies permit it. Here is the interesting rub - the solution enforces - it does not set policy, or manage. The kicker in the value of this is go ahead and deploy your Identity Management applications, it's a great thing to do, however just like Congress or State legislatures, the policies would be useless without the cops.

Pretty cool stuff.