Like the strains of COVID-19, cybersecurity threats mutate and pose novel risks, opening unforeseen vulnerabilities in the digital cloud and physical infrastructure.To immunize against the emerging insider and cyber threats, newer and more robust cybersecurity measures are necessary. This is where identity management systems or IMS come into the picture, guaranteeing that only authorized users can access the technical resources required to execute their jobs.
According to the Identity Management Institute, weak authentication and stolen passwords account for around 80% of all data breaches. Robust, future-forward identity management systems can dramatically mitigate existing and emerging threats to physical and cloud infrastructures.
Read on to learn about physical IMS and why it should be a top priority in your security audits.
What is identity management?
Identity management ensures that only authorized people can access the technology and infrastructure resources required for their job functions. It manages policies and technologies for proper identification, authentication, and authorization of people, groups, and software applications that include access rights and restrictions based on identities. Moreover, it ensures authorized and authenticated access to enterprise infrastructure, such as buildings, factories, construction sites, etc.
With strong identity management, organizations can prevent unauthorized access to systems and resources, which is required for data protection. Another advantage of identity management is that it generates alarms and alerts when unauthorized programs or personnel attempt to access the system, a user account, or infrastructure within or outside the enterprise premises. Moreover, identity management protects hardware resources such as networks, servers, and storage devices from unauthorized access.
How does identity management work?
Identity management includes a user management component and a central directory component.
User management components involve delegation of administrative authority, the provisioning and de-provisioning user accounts, the tracking of roles and responsibilities, and password management.
The central directory component keeps all user and group data in the organization.
In addition, the identity management framework provides for the authentication and authorization of resources. Authentication includes sign-in, management of active sessions, and strong authentication through biometric devices. The authorization contains attributes, roles, and rules in a user record for determining whether a specific user, application, or device should be granted access to a resource.
What is access management?
Access management is an essential tool for modern businesses to authenticate, authorize, and audit access to IT systems and applications. As a component of identity and access management solutions, it helps to strengthen the security of systems. Ultimately, access management reduces risks and threats by controlling access to unwalled workspaces and within enterprise applications, IT infrastructure, and services. In addition, it ensures the right users gain access to the right resources at the right time and for the right reasons.
Access management includes workforce access management and customer access management solutions to administer access privileges and track access attempts and activities. These solutions, available for both on-premise and cloud-based infrastructure, aim to simplify operations, provide instant scalability, and accelerate time-to-value.
Workforce access management solutions help authenticate and authorize employees and contractors to access an organization’s IT systems and applications. In contrast, customer access management solutions support authentication and authorization of clients and consumers accessing public-facing services and applications.
Functions of identity and access management system
Identity and access management includes policies and technologies ensuring appropriate access to data and technology resources within an organization’s infrastructure.
Identity and access management systems carry out three primary and essential functions:
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- Identity: The system supports identity creation, deletion, and management. It combines various parameters, such as user ID and password, to recognize each unique user within the system. Some of the latest systems also use biometric data like fingerprint or retina scans for user verification.
- Access: The system specifies rights on the application based on each user’s work function. Digital identity is used for access control and privileges. It helps organizations grant proper access and rights to specific users. In addition, the system can track the activity of applications to ensure authenticated access and facilitate safe activities.
- Entitlement: The system allocates application services depending on the user rights and access level. User services depend on the level of clearance and granted access rights.
Thus, identity and access management is a security discipline for organizations. It protects digital identities and infrastructure access while mitigating various threats and risks.
Modern solutions provide secure access for employees, business partners, contractors, customers, and remote and mobile users. As a part of the digital transformation of workspaces, even technological devices, code pieces, and systems are provided with identities.
Automation in identity and access management
Identity access management systems handle access to resources across heterogeneous technology environments within organizations. Effective implementation requires alignment with business goals and technical expertise.
Various tools and technologies are used while developing identity access management system capabilities to reduce costs and increase agility in business. Automation plays an important and beneficial role in identity access management for organizations:
- Reduction in human error: Although we can reduce human mistakes, we cannot them entirely. Automated systems have sophisticated algorithms that verify and manage authorization information more efficiently than humans.
- Reduced workload: Password management can consume a lot of IT department resources. By automatically recognizing users and their authorized access to resources, systems can allow users to set their passwords themselves, thereby reducing the IT department’s workload.
- Increased productivity: With automation, employees in IT and other departments can focus on their job rather than working on system management. Automation also reduces the time needed to obtain permission from higher authorities, and getting rapid access to resources increases the speed of the work.
- Secured cloud directory: Advanced, secure cloud directories use two-way authentication and other methods to prevent unauthenticated and unauthorized people from accessing the system.
Identity and access management are critical components of digital transformation within any organization’s infrastructure. It ensures authenticated and authorized access to various systems, applications, and devices within and outside the premises.
