What is Identity and Access Management?
Identity Access Management offers a framework of technologies and processes that only allow users with official authorization to access enterprise data, resources, assets, and more. This helps protect businesses from malicious actions and ensures best IT practices are maintained, all while enabling regulatory compliance targets to be met.
Defining Identity Access Management
To understand what is identity and access management, it’s important first to understand the enterprise's current digital landscape. Digital solutions and their ability to analyze data sets have introduced huge benefits for businesses including more effective strategizing and increased productivity. However, this shift to digital has also left enterprise data, assets, and resources far more exposed to both internal and external threats – especially those involving identity and access.
But how does an enterprise ensure that only the right people with the right permissions can access sensitive data, resources, and systems? It’s a question that keeps IT departments up at night as adopting the wrong strategy could cause catastrophic financial damage and reputational harm to an enterprise.
Modern approach to a modern problem
Designed to address these issues, identity access management offers a framework that enables IT managers to put restrictions on who can access enterprise data, resources, assets, and systems. Those who are ‘identified’ as legitimate can quickly access the resources they are authorized to.
However, those who are not – such as hackers or employees without suitable authorization – are locked out. To be clear, while no system offers total protection for a company operating within an ever-evolving threat landscape, an access and identity management solution offers the best possible solution at this time. It is capable of identifying and intercepting potential malicious actions or stopping data breaches before they happen. Crucially, such identity and access management tools represent a step change in data protection while showing a genuine commitment to best IT practices moving forward.
How does Identity Access Management work?
Managing Identity
The identity element of identity access management is managed in three different ways:
Identification
At the core of any access and identity management solution is its identity management database. This details all employees and stakeholders and their digital identities such as name and ID number as well as their role. Crucially, different levels of access can be given depending on digital identity classifications. For example, sensitive financial information can be assigned so it is only accessible to relevant identities while data with no or low sensitivity can be accessed by multiple identities or job types (see How does Identity Access Management work? below).
Updates
Company personnel and stakeholders' roles are constantly evolving so a successful identity lifecycle management is required. This means if someone leaves the company, their access is stopped or if an employee is promoted, their access privileges can be changed to suit their role within the identity access management solution.
Authentication
Identity and access management solutions can deploy different types of authentication to ensure the person attempting to use an identity in the identity management database is actually theirs. Authentication processes include two-factor authentication. This sees you entering your username and password – the first factor – before being asked to provide a second factor.
The second factor is typically a one-time code sent to your email address or mobile phone, which must be entered before you are given access. This is a similar service offered by customer identity and access management solutions deployed by banks to confirm an online purchase.
Managing Access
Once you have been authorized, access and identity management gives you access to the data, resources, assets, and more that are marked as available to your identity. Importantly, all actions you carry out while you are logged in are tracked and recorded by the cloud identity and access management solution. This enables the system to keep users away from resources they are not permitted to access as well as create audit trails for compliance reasons (see below).
What tech and processes underpin Identity Access Management?
Several key technologies and processes form the backbone of a successful identity and access management deployment. These include:
Single Sign-On (SSO)
This enables you to authenticate your identity via a single portal, rather than having to sign in with every resource, system, app, or device you are authorized to use. Crucially, it also means you don’t have to create – and remember – multiple passwords.
Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC)
If more a nuanced approach is required, enterprises can add another layer of authorization to their identity access management solution by deploying ABAC. This enables permissions to be set on multiple different attributes, instead of focusing solely on job titles and functions. For instance, permissions can be given depending on times of the day, location, device, data classification, and more.
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
In effect, PAM is ‘God Mode’ – or the nearest to one a single employee has within an organization. PAM is designed for highly privileged accounts such as senior IT admins who need superior access rights so they can carry out their duties at speed and without interruption.
Role-based Access Control (RBAC)
Access controls are typically put in place using RBAC. This enables you to assign permissions within your identity access management solution based on the role of the employee, defining what access they have – and don’t have. This powerful functionality allows you to fine-tune permissions on a granular level right down to individual users and what specific actions they can carry out.
For instance, a junior IT employee can be permitted to access and monitor, say, specific hardware performance. However, they will not have permission to make any actual changes. Instead, they must report any issue to a user with suitable permissions or an individual with PAM (see below) to make the required changes. Combined, this massively improves overall security and reduces the risk of unauthorized actions taking place.
Adaptive Authentication
AI-enabled identity access management solutions can operate authentication within real-time scenarios if a change in risk is detected. For instance, if working on a trusted device, you will only be required to enter your username and password. However, if you try and gain access using an untrusted device, identity access management can ask you to successfully pass another authentication level before being allowed to use the device. Combined with SSO and multi-factor authentication, this offers enterprises a highly robust platform for authenticating users on the fly.
Critical Security Controls (CIS)
Working in tandem with identity access management to create a robust cybersecurity strategy, CIS delivers the framework for instilling security and data security best practices within an enterprise while identity and access management is responsible for managing identities and permissions.
The benefits of IAM to business
From secure access to compliance, the right identity access management solution is transformative for business. Here’s why:
Protecting Enterprise
With its wealth of functionality, identity access management enables organizations to manage identities and permissions far more effectively. This in turn helps drive down the chances of malicious access occurring, meaning data, resources, assets, and systems can be kept safer.
Simplifying Processes
It’s simple: identity access management makes employees’ lives easier. With no need to remember multiple logins or passwords, expect productivity to be boosted as user experiences are enhanced with company systems and resources put front and center, instead of morale-sapping administrative busywork.
Embracing Digital
We live in a digital-first world where access to enterprise systems can be requested from BYOD, remote working, IoT devices, and many more. The ability of identity and access management to bring together all these request types into a single hub that defines permissions and carries out authentication is vital to remaining in control of network security.
Safeguarding Data
Just as important as who can access data is how that data is transmitted. The right identity and access management solution will offer data encryption tools that encrypt data in flight so that even if it is intercepted by a malicious party – or falls victim to a data breach – the data itself remains encrypted, rendering it worthless to an unauthorized recipient.
Freeing up IT
Identity access management means fewer instances of needing to help employees log in, minimizing the hands-on management of overall network access, and dramatically reducing the need for IT personnel to analyze access logs – as the identity and access management solution can take care of these challenges and many more via automated identity workflows. This leaves IT able to focus on larger technical opportunities, instead of being distracted with resource-wasting tasks.
Deploying AI
As previously highlighted, artificial intelligence is playing a larger role in identity access management systems. For instance, AI can create a baseline for normal user behavior right down to an individual user. When AI detects an individual user is making, say, an unusual amount of login attempts, it can flag this as a potential threat to security, locking the user out if required.
Ensuring Compliancy
Enterprise can use identity access management’s access logs for auditing purposes. Internally, this means users can be monitored to ensure they are not abusing their access permissions – or potential hackers can be identified and isolated from the enterprise’s IT system. Just as importantly, the exceptional audit capabilities offered by identity and access management enable enterprises to demonstrate to regulators that they are strictly adhering to security legislation including the General Data Protection Regulation.
How to implement identity access management within an enterprise
Introducing identity access management requires an enterprise to move methodically through several key stages. These ensure that any issues can be resolved safely – without impacting the entire company – as well as securing buy-in from all stakeholders. Here’s how the rollout strategy should be implemented:
Plan
… the goals for the identity access management and garner stakeholder buy-in by asking them what their requirements are – and crucially, what their expectations will be for the completed solution.
Define
… who should be given access to which data, resources, assets, and systems – and at what level – to create a robust access policy that is also aligned with the organization’s security and compliance requirements.
Source
… Identify and access management technology that is the right fit for your organizational needs via a reputable IDaaS provider (cloud-based solution) or an on-premise solution.
Configure
… the identity access management solution with the authentication methods required as well as ensuring the solution will integrate with existing technologies and apps used by the enterprise.
Deploy
… an identity and access management solution in stages, never all at once, to ensure the solution is fully tested and any issues are resolved immediately without impacting the entire organization.
Train
… staff in how to use identity and access management tools to ensure user buy-in and confidence in the new solution, while underlining best practices for security.
Monitor
… and maintain the identity access management solution as it is rolled out across the company; such monitoring should continue on a rolling basis and the solution constantly updated when patches or updates become available.
Evolve
… the identity access management solution as the needs of the organization change to deliver true scalability that can support the enterprise moving forward. Also, update access policies when required to ensure the IAM remains aligned with the company’s needs at all times.
OVHcloud and IAM
Securely manage the identities of your users and applications, as well as their permissions through a single interface for all of your services. OVHcloud identity access management solution provides granular access management for your OVHcloud products and strengthens the security of your access management by allowing you to leverage a single pane of glass interface.
Ace User/Role Management
By adopting OVHcloud’s OpenStack approach, you can take full role-based access control, managing user roles and defining the actions they can perform on your infrastructure – whether they are human- or automation tool-sourced.
Enhance Productivity
Automate different aspects of managing authentication, identities, and policies with OVHcloud IAM so you can improve the productivity of your teams and foster collaboration securely. With our multi-tenant feature, you can easily delegate access to your trusted partners while keeping total access control.