Nowadays security issues are a prime concern because most identity methods are not so effective. The more technology is improving, the more new threats are coming and IAM is needed to significantly mitigate them. Due to the amount of information which is stored, used and transmitted, companies must define certain restrictions regarding who is allowed to access data. Providing a secure access is a serious challenge to IT professionals who must simultaneously meet the needs of different users across numerous, disparate applications.

Meeting these demands across a variety of on-premises and cloud applications requires the use of agile identity and access management solutions. Effective IAM solutions help enterprises provide secure and efficient access to technology resources across diverse systems. They also deliver a number of significant benefits which is a good reason to implement Identity and Access Management Solution in your business.

Identity and access management (IAM) helps you securely control who has access to your systems, applications, and data within your organization, as well as where they can go within those systems.

With proper IAM solutions in place, organizations will be able to define who has what level of access. This shrinks the attack surface and prevents data leaks because user privileges are closely moderated.

What Is IAM?

Identity and access management encompasses a lot, but at its core IAM is about identity. IAM is set of policies, procedures, and protocols used to secure access to computing resources. Its primary purposes are security, compliance, and business continuity.

IAM is set of policies, procedures, and protocols used to secure access to computing resources.

The identity part of IAM is the methods by which an organization can verify that an individual is who they say they are. The access part of IAM refers to the process of determining how each individual should be allowed to access specific information, hardware, or software tools within an organization’s infrastructure.

The purpose of IAM is to provide access control to IT resources by managing user accounts, devices, applications, files, services, systems, and networks. In doing so, an organization can ensure that all business data is secure. IT can also create data policies that prevent data loss or theft.

Components of Identity and Access Management

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s break down exactly what identity and access management entails. There are four basic components:

• User provisioning
• Privileged Access Management (PAM)
• Account security
• Integration

An enterprise should have at least three to five goals when choosing an IAM solution — and again, these will depend on your unique needs. A good way to tell if your system is outmoded or inefficient is by monitoring login success rates. Ideally, your success rate should be above 95%. If it’s hovering around 75% or less, then something is wrong!

Main Benefits of Identity and Access Management

Improved security

IAM solutions help identify and mitigate security risks. You can use IAM to identify policy violations or remove inappropriate access privileges, without having to search through multiple distributed systems. You can also leverage IAM to ensure that security measures are in place to meet regulatory and audit requirements.

Information sharing

IAM provides a common platform for access and identity management information. You can apply the same security policies across all the operating platforms and devices used by the organization. IAM frameworks can help you enforce policies related to user authentication, privileges, and validation, and attend to “privilege creep”.

Ease of use

IAM simplifies signup, sign-in and user management processes for application owners, end-users and system administrators. IAM makes it simple to provide and manage access, and this promotes user satisfaction.

Productivity gains

IAM centralizes and automates the identity and access management lifecycle, creating automated workflows for scenarios like a new hire or a role transition. This can improve processing time for access and identity changes and reduce errors.

Reduced IT Costs

IAM services can lower operating costs. Using federated identity services means you no longer need local identities for external uses; this makes application administration easier. Cloud-based IAM services can reduce the need to buy and maintain on-premise infrastructure.

Compliance managagement

AM systems are instrumental in compliance efforts. It can provide many of the safety controls required by security standards and can demonstrate to auditors that corporate information is appropriately controlled.

Sources:
(1)  cioinsight.com
(2) SecurityTech

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