When the COVID-19 pandemic forced many employees to work remotely, IAM became essential to a robust cybersecurity strategy. These solutions manage identity accounts, services, and privileges across platforms.
They simplify access permissions, help adhere to security protocols, and mitigate internal threats by tracking anomalous behavior. Whether you opt for centralized or decentralized IAM, you need a flexible and easy-to-manage solution.
Security
As businesses become increasingly digital, their data becomes more vulnerable to cybercriminals. This makes IAM solutions important for companies to protect themselves from costly security breaches and cyber-attacks. In addition, identity and access management solutions control user accounts, privileges, and security configurations across various systems and applications.
IAM helps ensure that users only have access to the resources they need, which improves productivity and enhances security. It also allows IT professionals and security administrators to identify anomalies in permissions. Managing access rights and removing them quickly is possible for IAMs since it is a centralized system that can automate tasks without human error.
IAM solutions help mitigate risks by ensuring only approved employees can access business systems, applications, and confidential files. They are a vital tool for securing the identity of every enterprise user and keeping them up-to-date throughout their career with the company.
IAMs also provide a single sign-on for users, eliminating the need to remember multiple passwords and login credentials. IAMs can also automate workflows that manage granting, revoking, and updating user access privileges.
Compliance
Identity and access management solutions allow organizations to enforce strict internal policies and ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive data or digital infrastructure. This can significantly reduce the risks of cyber-attacks and data breaches and improve productivity and security.
Employees and third parties today access seemingly endless data, apps, and services. As such, businesses must implement robust authentication methods like zero trust and multifactor authentication to keep their digital infrastructure safe. IAM solutions can help by automating user provisioning and de-provisioning and access requests and approvals. This can free up valuable time for IT teams and simplify managing and scaling security measures.
IAM solutions also enable centralized identity and access management by managing a unified database of all identities and associated permissions across the organization. This makes it easier to identify unauthorized privileges, validations, and violations and quickly withdraw access if necessary. IAM can also be used to comply with various industry standards and regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and SOX by providing detailed records of activity.
Efficiency
With businesses moving to a hybrid work model and using many tools and applications, IAM solutions help manage identity at scale. IAM provides a centralized system for managing security and critical systems around identity, making it easier for users to access all the applications and tools they need in one place.
IAM solutions can also simplify signup and login processes for end-users and IT admins. It can also build automated workflows for specific scenarios, such as a new hire or role transfer, to speed up approvals and reduce errors.
An efficient IAM solution can also save time for both administrators and users by allowing them to self-service request processes like password resets. It can also allow employees to use the same password for multiple systems within the business with techniques which make it easy for users to access all the information and services they need.
This helps streamline the user experience and increases productivity. It can increase customer satisfaction by reducing customer wait times to access their accounts.
Scalability
Scalability is the ability of a system to handle changing workload behavior, whether it’s expected (such as more traffic on Monday morning when all employees log on to their plans) or unexpected scenarios like a viral news story that drives people to a website. The most successful businesses have a scalable platform that allows them to innovate, experiment with new products and services, and capture a larger market share without worrying about running out of resources or having an IT department overwhelmed.
IAM solutions enable a scalable platform by offering streamlined and automated processes for managing digital identities. These include identity governance that manages user account lifecycles, including onboarding, updating, and offboarding. It also offers unified access management that controls and enforces centralized security policies, often with single sign-on technologies and multifactor authentication enablement.
Additionally, these tools track identity activities to detect anomalies and prevent unauthorized actions by internal personnel or external threats. Zero trust policy support ensures that all users are continuously authenticated, granting access to the right tools and resources. This minimizes the risk of a data breach.
Authentication
Modern IAM solutions use digital identity to confirm who a person is, what device they’re on, and what application they are accessing. This helps businesses strengthen security, improve data management, and support compliance standards.
IAM is essential for ensuring the right people are using the right technology. It allows organizations to grant users access to apps and software suites based on their role and department while limiting privileged accounts that could give hackers a foothold.
To prevent security breaches, IAM must provide audit capabilities that help track and monitor blockages, errors, and suspicious behavior. It should also enable a zero-trust policy by constantly monitoring user identities and access points to identify and eliminate vulnerabilities.
This could involve multifactor authentication, risk-based access, and even biometrics like eye scanning or fingerprint sensors. It’s also vital that IAM is provided as a cloud-based service to avoid physical maintenance costs, ensure uptime, and offer fast SLAs to users. This makes it easier for teams to work together while reducing IT complexity.
