Nowadays, companies rely on technology to run their business. While this understandably offers great benefits such as improved productivity and ease of use for the employees, it also presents significant challenges. The first one to come to mind is obviously cyber attacks. They get more sophisticated, harder to defend against, and more frequent every passing day. In this context, Identity and Acces Management (IAM) become crucial to protect a business' digital assets.
In this simple guide, we will talk about what is IAM, how it works, and what are its components, and lastly explain why your business needs it. If you feel overwhelmed with the threats your online business face, get to know IAM better and see if it can help you with your cyber security efforts.
What is IAM?
Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a cyber security framework designed to control access permissions for digital assets and manage user identities. Being a structured approach to access control, IAM ensures that the right people have the right resources at the right time. Those who don't need the resources are also prevented from accessing them.
IAM consists of four main components: authentication, authorization, administration, and auditing.
Firstly, authentication is the process of verifying user identities before allowing access. The verification involves a combination of usernames and passwords, MFA or 2FA, or biometrics. In order to add a second layer of security, the system asks for an identifier of the user such as a fingerprint.
Once the authentication is completed, it is now time for authorization, which is the process of denying or allowing access to resources based on the user's role. In this step, IAM enforces the policies of the company and only allows access to pre-defined sets of information.
The administration step involves managing digital identities, user roles, and access rights. This includes creating accounts for the users, changing permissions when necessary, or deleting the accounts whenever an employee is terminated.
Lastly, auditing is the process of monitoring the activities of the users to ensure compliance with security standards and company policies. In this step, IT teams track the user activities and detect any unauthorized access attempts to respond to incidents promptly. In addition to these steps, you can learn about IAM best practices since the needs of every business differs, and these steps can also change depending on your network structure.
How IAM Works
Identity and Access Management works by creating a centralized system to control all access to resources including business applications, online tools, and the data stored in the private network of a company.
With the steps and components explained above, IAM ensures that a user only has access to what they need. In addition to this, it also enforces the authentication process to make sure that the request comes from the authorized user.
One of the best factors about the way IAM works is that it is a centralized system as already mentioned. This means the different groups of users including the contractors, partners, and employees are all subject to this control system. Being a cyber security framework, IAM utilizes a set of technologies to authenticate, authorize, monitor users, and respond to potential threats.
Why Your Business Needs IAM
Now that you know what IAM is and how it works, we can talk about why your business needs IAM. At first glance, it may look like something that appeals more to larger enterprises with hundreds of employees. However, IAM can be beneficial for all sizes of businesses. Below, you'll find common points that would make every business better with IAM.
Improved security
IAM is designed to control access to business resources so that data breach risk is minimized in a private network where sensitive data is stored. This means that improving the overall security within your business is the first benefit IAM offers.
Thanks to authentication, IAM ensures that only authorized personnel can get into the network and access business information. In a world full of cybercrimes, this is a considerable plus for all businesses.
In addition to outsider threats, IAM also enables businesses to divide their network into components and assign specific roles to their employees. Since insider threats become more and more common, it is important to adopt a least-privileged approach to access permissions.
Increased efficiency
IAM creates a centralized system to manage digital identities and enforce security policies by automation. This streamlines the process of users accessing the resources they need, so it saves time and reduces the administrative burden on the IT team.
From employees to network admins, IAM offers a more straightforward and easy-to-use system so that they can focus on more initiative tasks. Instead of dealing with cumbersome log-in processes, employees are able to effectively reach all the information they need and do their job.
Compliance
Security compliance is a hot topic in cybersecurity right now. Authorities enforce standards for online businesses since almost all of them receive, use, and store the personal information of their clients. Regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA manage data protection issues and may penalize companies if they do not comply.
IAM helps with this compliance journey of a business by allowing them to protect sensitive data through role-based access permissions and authorization processes. By minimizing internal threats, companies ensure that personal information is only accessible to a handful of highly authorized people.
Enhanced user experience
IAM significantly enhances the user experience in an organization. With IAM, users can utilize single sign-on (SSO) and enter their credentials only once, and access all resources they are authorized per their role. This ability eliminates the need for remembering all the credentials for different services and simplifies the process for the end-users.
This framework also enables self-service capabilities for the users. Based on their roles, users can request access to resources without asking for support from the IT team and manage their accounts themselves. In addition to being an easier system for the users, this also takes the burden off of IT teams.
Cost savings
By creating a centralized system of managing the digital identities of all the parties within an organization, IAM reduces the need for extensive administrative tasks. Additionally, it also handles all the steps starting from enforcing security policies and authenticating users. Lastly, IAM mitigates the risk of data breaches which can directly jeopardize profits, saving money in the long run.
Conclusion
IAM is a critical component of a proper cybersecurity strategy. Organizations store sensitive information on their private networks, and this information needs to be protected with caution, even from insiders.
By implementing IAM, businesses can improve their security posture and defend their networks against both internal and outsider threats. Managing digital identities and assets is key to a secure network, and IAM is here to do that.
