According to the 2024 Annual Data Exposure Report, 72% of professionals believe that they could get fired due to internal threats to their organizational resources and systems. Do you fear that you could be one of them? We kid you not, but insider threats in organizations are on the rise, and you could be the next victim.
Wonder why? The same report highlights the fact that while organizations have data security systems in place, they might not be able to protect the organization from internal data breaches. Chances are that you might already know it. Because 78% of professionals confessed that their organizational data and systems remain exposed.
Is there a way to mitigate this? There should be. The good news is that identity and access management can help you navigate the threat of internal data breaches. To cut it short, identity access management enables you to secure your organizational resources and systems from both internal and external threats using a “single source of truth.”
You might be wondering why you need an identity and access management system in place when you can simply create separate credentials for each platform used by your organization.
This is because organizations deal with a constant barrage of cyber threats, and managing user access to sensitive information can feel like an endless battle. Reports indicate that 2023 was the year when a record number of identities were stolen, eventually causing severe damage to businesses.
However, with identity and access management (IAM) in place, organizations can boost security. It acts as a digital gatekeeper, carefully verifying user identities and controlling what resources they can access.
However, IAM offers more than just enhanced security. This article will delve into the depths of IAM, explaining what it is, what it is composed of, how it works, the underlying technologies, top IAM solution providers, and last but not least, the importance of having identity and management for securing your organizational systems and resources.
So, without any further ado, let’s get started with what is identity and access management.
What Is Identity and Access Management (IAM)?
Identity and access management (IAM) is a process or framework that organizations like yours use to manage and safeguard digital identities and control user access to various resources. It ensures that only authorized users can have access to businesses' digital resources.
It acts like a digital doorkeeper, verifying each user's identity and giving them permission to access, download, view, make changes, or perform other actions. Gartner provides a straightforward central idea of IAM.
Gartner provides a straightforward central idea of IAM:
"IAM helps the right people to get access to the right assets at the right time for the right reasons."
Regardless of where people are working, identity access management uses a sophisticated approach to allow people to access resources like company emails, data, applications, cloud storage, and various other tools.
To access such resources, identity and access management tools use two main areas: "identity management," which creates and manages user identities, and "access management," which determines what resources users can access and what they can do with those resources.
What Is the Purpose of Identity and Access Management?
The primary purpose of identity and access management is to improve the overall cybersecurity security of the organization and assist IT professionals in securing a business's sensitive information.
The term "Identity and Access Management" consists of many practices, frameworks, applications, and components. However, its ultimate purpose is to restrict and control access to organizational resources.
Furthermore, an identity and access management system has several key objectives that work together to boost an organization's security and efficiency. Here's a breakdown of the main ones:
- Maintaining security is a top priority in identity access management, securing access to organizational resources.
- Complying with various data and privacy protection regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and NIST.
- Increasing efficiency by saving time and optimizing resources with the help of automated processes for provisioning and revoking access.
- Reducing risk by controlling access and user activity. IAM helps mitigate the risk of data breaches and insider threats.
Understanding Digital Identities
When working with access management software, it is crucial to know what digital identities are and how they function.
A digital identity is just like a person's identity card but in digital form, as they are digitally documented and shared online. It can represent users, organizations, and devices.
However, as for digital identity, it consists of way more than just some basic info like names. They can include a username, email address, entitlements, and credentials.
Unlike analog identities, digital ones have different validity requirements. For instance, a digital identity should be:
- Non-transferable, i.e., it should not be accessed by someone else.
- Reusable, i.e., it should not be for one-time use. Instead, it should be used whenever required.
What Are the Examples of Digital Identities?
There are many unique identifiers within a digital identity. Some of them are as follows:
- Date of birth
- Email addresses
- Social Security Number (SSN)
- Usernames
- Passwords
- IP addresses
- Locations
- Security tokens
- Digital certificates
- Passport numbers
What Are the Different Components of IAM?
Now that we've established how identity and access management tools safeguard access, how do they do that? Let's delve into the key components that make them function effectively. These components, working together as a well-defined system, ensure secure access by verifying user identities, controlling permissions, and maintaining a clear audit trail of who has access to what resources. The following are the various components of identity and access management:
Provisioning and De-Provisioning
User provisioning and de-provisioning are key components of identity and access management. They consist of creating, deleting, and updating user accounts in various systems and applications.
Consider a new employee who has joined your organization, and as an IT administrator, your job is to make sure that this user has the right amount of access to resources to get going, but at the same time, he is limited as well.
Here, provisioning comes into play, and a new user is registered for a role. Let's say the new employee has joined the marketing team, so user provisioning will add users to the apps and resources based on their role. The user will get access to all the marketing tools, such as HubSpot, Mailchimp, and others.
Now, the employee has left the organization or changed departments. You must remove access from the marketing resources. De-provisioning makes it easy. Instead of manually removing access from everywhere, it allows you to change the user status, and all access will be deleted or suspended.
Identification
The identification element in the identity and access management system is all about confirming a user's identity before granting access. It's like showing your ID at the door. This involves authentication, where users present credentials like usernames and passwords. An Identity Provider (IdP) acts as the central authority, storing user credentials and verifying them during this process.
Imagine a user trying to access a company app: the system asks for their credentials, they enter them, the system sends this info to the IdP, the IdP checks their database, and finally grants or denies access based on the verification.
Authentication
Imagine your organization as a digital castle guarded by access management software. For any user to enter, they first need to prove their identity. As we mentioned above, this initial step involves identification.
Next comes the critical verification stage, known as authentication. Here, users present credentials – something they know, like a password or a security key. IAM then checks these credentials against a trusted source, often an Identity Provider (IdP) acting as the castle's secure vault holding the keys.
The authentication component of the identity and access management system only checks if the user's credentials match the organization's existing identities. The next component in the IAM framework after authentication is authorization.
Authorization
People often interchange authorization with authentication but do not know these are two totally different terms and serve different purposes. Here is how:
Even after proving your identity at the IAM castle gate (authentication), you may not move freely inside. Here, authorization checks your user role and assigns permissions (like viewing financial reports) against established rules. If your role has the necessary permissions, you are granted access, like a VIP pass holder entering a restricted area. If not, access is denied. This ensures that only authorized individuals, like accountants with permission to view financial reports, can access sensitive resources.
This minimizes the risk of data breaches and accidental data modification by granting only the minimum access required (principle of least privilege).
Single Sign-on (SSO)
With single sign-on, users can access multiple applications and business resources using a single set of credentials (username and password). SSO is based on a trusting relationship between an application and the SSO service provider. Here is how it works:
You have a central service, often called the Identity Provider (IdP), that verifies your identity. Once you log in to the IdP, applications trusting that IdP receive a secure token confirming your identity.
A token is a digital file containing user identification information, such as names and email addresses. Upon an access request, the token is exchanged with the SSO service, which authenticates the user.
These applications grant access without requiring a separate login, thus creating a smooth login experience.
Federated Identity Management (FIM)
The Federated Identity Management system helps users from different organizations and departments access the same resources by using the same credentials, just like in SSO.
However, SSO and FIM are different from one another. SSO provides a one-click login to users within an organization, while FIM does the same thing but for multiple organizations.
An example of a federated identity is having a Google account, which can be used to access different Google applications. Nonetheless, Google has partnerships with many other organizations. Through federated identities, you can use your Google account credentials to log in to different applications. For example, logging in to various other sites allows users to use Google accounts to log in as a part of the federated identity.
Now, since we are done learning about the different components that make up identity and access management, it’s time to delve into understanding directory services and their purpose.
What Are Directory Services, and What Purpose Do They Serve?
A directory service is a centralized repository for managing and storing information, but the information stored in it is not ordinary. These are data sets that contain usernames, passwords, application data, enrolments, and authentication preferences. IT professionals use directory services to onboard users, monitor and restrict access, or manage user access privileges.
As you can see, the data in it is pretty much identity- and access-related, but how does it work?
So, when you access an application on your mobile, cloud, or somewhere else, the application will try to validate your identity in your organization, which is stored in the directory.
The purpose of active directories is to make sure that they tell the application that you are a legitimate user of the organization and that you are authorized to access the resource and perform allowed activities there. They are used for high-volume lookup searches as they can quickly respond to them and contain a huge amount of information.
The most widely used enterprise-grade directory service is Microsoft Azure Active Directory. The reason why organizations turn to such services is because they provide the following elements.
- A schema and attributes for different directory objects (e.g., name, address, users).
- A centralized database for every object in the directory.
- A query or indexing method for applications, administrators, and users to retrieve information from the directory.
By now, we hope that you have a crystal-clear understanding of what identity access management is, its components, directory service, and digital identities. If not, you can refer to the sections above to get a clear picture. Now is the time to move on and learn about how identity and access management works.
How Identity and Access Management Works?
Let's examine how the IAM process works when you log into one of your business applications.
Authentication Request
You try to log in to your business portal. This triggers an authentication request from your application to a separate identity provider server.
Sending ID Token
Once your credentials are verified, the identity provider sends an ID token back to your application. This ID token contains essential information about you.
Obtaining End User Consent
In some cases, you might see a consent screen for the application to access specific resources—once granted, authorization proceeds.
Token Validation
Your application receives an access token (if authorized) with specific permissions. It then sends this token back to the identity provider for validation. The identity provider verifies the token and grants access if it is valid.
Technologies for Identity and Access Management
While the core principles of access management software remain consistent, the specific technologies used to implement them can vary. This section will explore some of the most common IAM technologies. We'll cover tools that manage authentication, authorization, and more, providing a comprehensive overview of the IAM technology landscape.
Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)
Security Assertion Markup Language, more commonly known as SAML, is a critical identity and access management tool. It is the technology that enables SSO and simplifies logins across multiple applications.
It is a standard used for exchanging authentication and authorization information across access controls, identity providers, and other applications, eliminating the need to log in to integrated solutions by using a central identity provider.
SAML centralizes authentication with an identity provider, allowing applications to leverage it for user access. This eliminates the burden of remembering multiple credentials.
OpenID Connect (OIDC)
OpenID Connect is an extension of Open Authorization (OAuth) 2.0, an identity and authorization protocol for authenticating and authorizing users when they sign in to a service. It is also known as OIDC, and the technology behind this tool is JSON web tokens.
OIDC allows users to sign in to one application and receive access to another. It can be better understood when you try to create a VIDIZMO account, and there are two ways to do it:
- You can create a VIDIZMO account and add another set of credentials to your collection.
- You can also sign in using Microsoft Entra ID, and it will send your username and password to VIDIZMO so that it can authenticate you.
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
Lightweight Discovery Access Protocol (LDAP) is a vendor-neutral software protocol that enables users to find information such as devices, names, and files in a network or device.
LDAP can also cater to authentication. Users can log in once and can access various files on the network or server. Since it is a vendor-neutral program, it can work with different kinds of directory programs.
Directories that contain the following data will specifically benefit from LDAP:
- Descriptive Data (Multiple data like location and name that can be combined to create an asset)
- Valuable Data (Data that holds crucial information for businesses within a directory and is accessed repeatedly)
- Static Data (This data is the one that does not change frequently or remains constant)
Consider your directory as a phonebook, with resources like usernames and emails in separate sections. With LDAP, users can securely log in and seamlessly find files within a network.
System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM)
System for Cross-Domain Identity Management, popularly known as SCIM, is an open standard that enables user provisioning. It uses several different protocols, including REST, JSON, and others, for data automation.
With SCIM, businesses can create, update, activate, and deactivate a wide range of accounts with very little effort. IT professionals have to identify the information for users and their requested permissions.
SCIM defines a standard format for user data and uses a simple API (like create, update, delete) for communication. When you add an employee to your central directory, SCIM can automatically create accounts for them in connected apps with the right permissions. This keeps everything in sync and saves you time.
Auth0
Auth0 is another popular open-standard authorization protocol that allows users to log in using existing credentials and log into a different application. It is for businesses that have SaaS services and applications.
For example, you can use your Google identity to log into Zoom. Since Google knows your identity, it becomes an authorization server and grants you access to Zoom using an authorization token.
Moreover, Auth0 has a wide range of integrations and APIs with many widely used identity providers, enabling developers to benefit from existing workflows and identities.
Top IAM Solution Providers
Businesses struggling with managing digital identities and security can greatly benefit from identity and access management tool providers. These solutions manage user identities and access controls and help businesses comply with regulations. Let's explore a few widely used IAM solution providers.
Microsoft Entra ID
The above-mentioned Microsoft Azure AD is one of the most widely used directory services by enterprises. Microsoft has rebranded its name to "Microsoft Entra ID."
It is a cloud-based identity access management solution that allows employees to access external resources. Although Azure AD and Entra ID have the same functionalities, Entra ID takes identity management to the next level by introducing identity as a Service (IDaaS) for all on-premises and cloud-based applications.
Entra ID enables organizations to provide a seamless user login experience even in multi-cloud environments. All identities and access configurations are stored in a central location.
Ping ID
Ping Identity is another valuable and well-known cloud identity and access management service. Because of its comprehensive capabilities, it has become a favorable option for organizations.
Like many other identity and access management tools, Ping Identity is also focused on SaaS and allows enterprises to integrate it with their hybrid IT environments.
Its IAM capabilities include SSO, authorization, MFA, directory, identity verification, threat protection, and much more. It can also be used as PingFederate for secondary authentication. These capabilities are only a few of Ping ID's vast array of IAM products and solutions.
Okta
Okta is enterprise access management software built for the cloud, but it can also work with various on-premises applications. The primary features of Okta include SSO, provisioning and de-provisioning, LDAP and active directory integration, mobile identity management, and much more.
Most businesses rely on Microsoft's Active Directory (AD) to control who can access important programs. However, many modern cloud-based applications (SaaS) have separate login systems.
This creates a headache for businesses because employees have to juggle multiple usernames and passwords, and IT departments waste time managing accounts in both AD and separate SaaS applications.
Okta solves this problem by connecting your Active Directory to all your cloud applications. This lets your employees use their AD login for everything, while IT can manage user access from one central location.
OneLogin
OneLogin is another enterprise access management solution that allows users to access necessary organizational resources to perform their tasks.
OneLogin can also be integrated with on-premises and cloud applications using Open ID, SAML, WS-Federation, and other web services to provide SSO services, provisioning, directory integrations, MFA, and OTP solutions.
This centralized approach keeps all applications organized and eliminates the burden of remembering multiple passwords. On the IT side, it means reliable security with a single sign-on (SSO) solution, ensuring secure access for employees, partners, and even customers.
ForgeRock
ForgeRock is an identity and access management platform that also offers user-managed access, identity gateway, and directory services in a single unified platform.
It has different modules for identity, access, and directory services. The Access module consists of intelligent access, authorization, federation, and user-managed access.
The identity management module consists of workflow, identity synchronization, self-service, social identity, access request, identity lifecycle and relationship, and access review.
ForgeRock stands out for its well-rounded capabilities. It delivers high performance and scalability to handle the growing demands of IAM. It is also cost-effective, enhances user experience, strengthens overall security, and helps organizations meet compliance requirements.
Importance of Identity and Access Management System in Your IT Toolkit
Let's face it: IT professionals wear many hats. They're the system guardians, the troubleshooting wizards, and the user productivity champions. But one thing can put all the hard work in vain: unauthorized access controls for the company's data and resources.
This is where identity and access management will be a lifesaver. Employees, contractors, and whoever needs access can get in, and it clearly defines what they can do once they're there. So, with that in place, you will have peace of mind that your business is in safe hands.
Why Does Your Organization Needs Enterprise Access Management?
The advantages of using IAM go way beyond security. Here's how it makes your organization's operations easier and more secure:
1. Safeguard your digital identity
2. Enhanced security
3. Improved compliance
4. Increased efficiency
5. Reduced risk of insider threats
6. Keep the data confidential
7. Integration with existing resources
Safeguard Your Digital Identity
IAM acts as a shield for a business's digital identity. It verifies users and ensures they have the minimum access needed. By using robust security measures, it makes unauthorized access difficult. It also manages user lifecycles, automatically cutting off access for those who leave.
Enhanced Security
IAM systems limit access to data and resources based on a user's role and permissions. This helps prevent unauthorized access, data breaches, and malicious activity. For instance, an IAM system can ensure that a marketing employee cannot access financial data.
Improved Compliance
Many data privacy and protection regulations like HIPAA and GDPR require organizations to track user access activity, verify identity, and secure request access. IAM systems automate these processes, reducing the risk of non-compliance and hefty fines.
Increased Efficiency
IAM streamlines user provisioning and de-provisioning. This eliminates the need for manual processes and allows IT to focus on more essential tasks. Additionally, IAM features like single sign-on (SSO) can improve user experience by reducing login headaches.
Reduced Risk of Insider Threats
Unhappy employees or those with excessive access can be security risks. Insider threats are a more common security challenge than you think. The United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency says that 90% of cybersecurity professionals believe their organizations are vulnerable to insider threats.
However, this challenge can be easily overcome through identity access management. It monitors user activity, allowing organizations to identify anomalies like accessing data outside regular hours, time zones, or regions. In case of such threats, identify access management issues immediately and inform the responsible security personnel.
Keep The Data Confidential
Every organization has sensitive information that needs protection. Identity and access management protects this data by controlling who can access specific applications and files. Hence, business operations continue as per the requirements while the organizational data is not harmed.
Keep Identities Under a Centralized Data Base
Identity access management is a centralized solution that lets a business store all its user identities. It can cater to diverse types of identities like emails, passwords, etc.
The centralized nature of IAM simplifies identity management for security professionals and training professionals. The result would be smoother automation of tasks like assigning and removing access privileges for employees.
Integration With Existing Resources
Whenever an acquisition is made, the existing IT systems need to be combined. This includes merging user accounts and sensitive data. However, keeping this data in different databases can lead to data breaches and human errors.
Another risk is that some users might end up with more access than they should, allowing them to see or change information.
Identity and access management systems help solve this problem. IAM tools can smoothly integrate user accounts and data from both companies, ensuring everyone has the correct access levels and preventing unauthorized access.
Comply With Data Privacy Regulations
Data privacy regulations require strong identity and access management practices because businesses are accountable for how sensitive information is accessed and handled.
In the past, corporations have been fined millions of dollars for violating data privacy laws. In particular, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has been fined 1.2 million euros for violating GDPR data laws.
To avoid such penalties, identity and access management play a key role in creating a secure system for accessing enterprise video content. It offers granular access control, allowing businesses to restrict sensitive videos to authorized personnel only and complying with data privacy regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and FOIA.
Safeguard Your Digital Identity
Identity access management acts as a shield for a business's digital identity. It verifies users and ensures they have the minimum access needed. By using robust security measures, it makes unauthorized access difficult. It also manages user lifecycles, automatically cutting off access for those who leave.
Using advanced access management software, even if any unauthorized or suspicious attempt is made, it is identified under audit logs. Thus, it leaves no room for threats and protects an organization's digital reputation.
Keep the Data Confidential
Not everything needs to be accessible to everyone. It is necessary to maintain transparency, but keeping the data confidential is for the greater good of a business, safeguarding trade secrets, internal decisions, finances, and much more.
By implementing access controls with an identity and access management system, you can ensure that only authorized individuals have access to restricted assets and files within your company. This helps safeguard the confidentiality of information.
Eliminate Chances of Human Errors
No matter how much precaution you take, human error is unavoidable, and you can not afford that risk because of the privacy laws and data breach consequences.
However, that is not the case with identity and access management. It offers options like single sign-on (SSO) instead of complex passwords. After all, password fatigue is a real thing. In short, IAM reduces reliance on memory and minimizes the chance of login errors.
Secondly, IAM automates access provisioning. This eliminates the risk of human error when manually granting or revoking access to sensitive data, ensuring the right people have the right permissions at the right time.
Simplify User Logins
Identity access management uses single sign-on for access control. Imagine one key unlocking all approved apps. Employees can use one set of credentials to log in to various applications, websites, and platforms.
This not only improves user experience by eliminating multiple logins but also enhances security by centralizing authentication. IAM streamlines access with SSO, creating a win-win for user experience and access management.
Keep Identities Under a Centralized Database
Identity access management is a centralized solution that allows a business to store all of its user identities. It can accommodate diverse types of identities, such as emails, passwords, and other user identity attributes.
The centralized nature of IAM simplifies identity and access management for security and training professionals. This would result in smoother automation of tasks like assigning and removing access privileges for employees and other stakeholders.
Assist Incident Management and Response
Having many incident management and response tools will only increase security risk and complications, let alone prevent data disclosure. Having no incident management and response tool at all is also not an option. So, the key here is to find the right balance. This is why IAM is a preferred framework for many organizations, as it can detect both internal and external threats.
Available in access management software, audit logs track and notify the administrator if any action has been taken, user logins, for instance. They even provide an individual's IP address, name, email address, and geolocation.
Detect Insider Threats
Insider threats are a more common security challenge than you think. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the US states that 90% of cybersecurity professionals believe their organizations are vulnerable to insider threats.
However, this challenge can be easily overcome through an identity and access management system. It monitors user activity, allowing organizations to identify anomalies like accessing data outside regular hours, time zones, or defined regions. In case of such threats, IAM immediately informs the responsible security personnel.
Integrate with Existing Resources
Whenever an acquisition is made, the existing IT systems need to be combined or integrated to ensure seamless interoperability. This includes merging user accounts and sensitive data. However, keeping this data in different databases can lead to mismanagement, which may result in the unintentional disclosure of information.
Another risk is that some users might end up with more access than they should, allowing them to see or change information.
Identity and access management systems help solve this problem. IAM tools can smoothly integrate user accounts and data from both companies, ensuring everyone has the correct access levels and preventing unauthorized access.
Identity and Access Management In A Nutshell
With the rising number of security threats, securing sensitive data and resources is no longer a choice. It has become a necessity. Hence, identity and access management is a must-have capability that cannot be ignored.
Identity access management significantly reduces the risk of unauthorized access, data breaches, and malicious activities by verifying user identities and granting them only minimal access necessary for their specific roles.
Furthermore, it helps with compliance. With IAM, your organization can become an industry leader by complying with numerous state, federal, and international data protection regulations.
In short, IAM is an investment in your organization's future. It fosters a secure environment where data is protected, users are empowered, and IT resources are optimized. By implementing a strong IAM solution, you gain peace of mind knowing your organization's digital assets are safeguarded, compliance is ensured, and your workforce is empowered to achieve peak performance.
VIDIZMO Offers Robust Identity and Access Management for Enterprises
VIDIZMO, a reputed provider of an enterprise video content management system, a digital evidence management system, and a redaction solution prioritizes identity and access management to secure its platforms.
Taking full advantage of IAM technology, VIDIZMO utilizes the latest security tools and features to ensure that no unauthorized access occurs within its system.
Moreover, the wide range of APIs and integrations with identity and access management tools allows organizations to make seamless transitions and secure access using existing identities and active directories.
Apart from these, VIDIZMO has tough access control options within its portals, such as limiting access rights, tokenized URLs, multi-tenancy, role-based access controls, and more.
Want to try these security features yourself? Then get a 7-day free trial or book a demo to see them in action!
People Also Ask
What does it mean by IAM?
IAM stands for identity and access management. It consists of multiple technologies and security practices to give access to data to the right people at the right time.
How does identity and access management work?
Identity and access management is a framework for managing user identities and access to resources within a system. It involves authentication, authorization, and permission management to ensure that only authorized individuals can access specific resources to perform certain actions.
What are the four common pillars of IAM?
The four pillars of IAM are Identity Governance and Administration, Access Management, Active Directory Management, and Privileged Access Management.
What are the 3 As of identity and access management?
The 3 As of identity and access management are authentication, authorization, and accounting.
What is the best IAM in the market?
There are many IAM providers like Okta, One Login, and Azure AD. These IAM providers can be integrated with VIDIMO EnterpriseTube, which also provides advanced access controls and IAM frameworks to organizations so that they can secure their enterprise video content.