Identity and Access Management

What Is Identity and Access Management (IAM)?

Identity and Access Management is an essential part of overall IT security that manages digital identities and user access to data, systems, and resources within an organization. IAM security includes the policies, programs, and technologies that reduce identity-related access risks within a business.

As a critical security function, IAM enables companies to not just respond to changes in the business, but also become more proactive in anticipating identity-related access risks that result from the dynamic business environment.

According to the 2021 Identity and Access Management Report, 87 percent of organizations confirm that IAM is important in their risk management and security posture. This confirmation of IAM as a strategic imperative means it should be viewed from a cross-functional perspective of stakeholders—from business leaders, IT and security teams, customers, auditors, employees, contractors and non-employees, vendors and partners.

A solid approach to IAM enables organizations to mitigate risks, improve compliance, and increase efficiencies across the enterprise. That’s why overseeing appropriate access through the right IAM framework goes a long way towards bolstering risk management within the organization and closing the gap on overall IAM risk.

Why Do Organizations NeedIdentity and Access Management?

Efficiency

Streamline identity and access management with end-to-end coverage for every use case. Effectively manage role creation, requests, approvals, removals, and certification across your organization. Simplify the work of your team with automated workflows and fast access to important assets.

Security

Avoid security breaches by continuously monitoring for policy violations and vulnerabilities and by uncovering problems hidden in large volumes of data. Quickly and reliably conduct analyses, find patterns, identify anomalies, and spot trends. Strengthen risk management by reducing vulnerabilities immediately and by highlighting individuals and resources associated with high risks.

Compliance

Identify and manage access rights for applications and strictly control access to sensitive data in adherence to regulations like SOX, HIPAA, and the GDPR. Immediately respond to audit demands to prove compliance with built-in reporting capabilities.

What Do Identity and Access Management Solutions Do?

Identity and Access Management solutions enable organizations to ensure greater control of user access. By identifying, authenticating, and authorizing users, while prohibiting unauthorized ones, IAM tools and solutions improve the efficiency and effectiveness of access management and identity governance throughout the business.

Increase Operational Efficiencies

IAM empowers organizations to do more with less. Many security teams today are understaffed and overextended, but are expected to manage and protect increasing numbers of devices, data, users, and systems. By leveraging IAM programs to automate and streamline access management, organizations can boost operational efficiencies. One study found that 49 percent of organizations view operational efficiency as an IAM program driver.

Enhance Security and Mitigate Risks

A recent study found that 50 percent of organizations indicate identity and access management programs are the most effective security tool to protect against insider threats, while 75 percent of organizations that use identity and access management solutions saw a reduction of unauthorized access incidents. Overseeing appropriate access through the right IAM security framework goes a long way towards bolstering an organization’s risk management and security posture.

When managing access within the organization, IAM also ensures that users have the right access privileges required for their job. Without it, bulk approvals for access requests, frequent changes in roles and departments, and the lack of suitable processes for access reviews contributes to excessive access privileges—opening up the organization to insider threats and magnifying risk throughout the business.

Improve Compliance

As regulatory compliance and industry mandates like SOX, HIPAA, and GDPR have become increasingly stringent and more complex in recent years, organizations face more auditing, compliance reviews, and mandatory reporting. IAM solutions that automate data collection, reporting, and access reviews enable companies to limit access to only those individuals who need it and stay more compliant to industry standards. By leveraging strategic IAM security policies, organizations can ensure data is strictly controlled and prove they are taking proactive steps to meet ongoing compliance requirements.

Tools and Technologies Used in Identity and Access Management

Organizations today typically use leading IAM security tools through best of breed solution partners—from identity governance solutions to privileged access management to access intelligence tools offered either on premise, on cloud or through hybrid model. These tools make up the technology solutions that support the overall IAM security framework and are essential in establishing a solid foundation for identity and access management.

Identity Governance & Administration

Identity Governance & Administration (IGA) automates the creation, management, and certification of user accounts to streamline user provisioning, password management, policy management, access governance, and access reviews. IGA increases visibility into the identities of users to better manage who has access to what systems and when.

Privileged Access Management

Privileged Access Management is a critical security control that enables organizations to simplify how they define, monitor, and manage privileged access across their IT systems, applications, and infrastructure. PAM solutions centralize management of administrator profiles and ensure least privileged access is enforced to give users only the access they need.

Access Intelligence

Access intelligence tools enable organizations to maintain a continuous view of their systems, while improving compliance and prioritizing access risks. By providing a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between identities, access rights, and resources, organizations can identify access risks and leverage controls to manage risk within the business.

What Are Identity Analytics and How Do They Improve IAM?

Organizations that want to mitigate identity-related access risks should begin by leveraging intelligence to understand what risks are most pressing in their organization. In fact, the success of identity and access management programs can be greatly improved through identity analytics that increase visibility and insight into an environment.

Defining Identity Analytics

According to Gartner, identity analytics are the next evolution of identity governance and access management. Identity analytics combine big data and advanced analytics to detect access-related risks and enhance IAM programs. Further, identity analytics enable organizations to evaluate where the greatest identity-related risks exist based on key insights and then address over-provisioned users, unused or unnecessary entitlements, orphaned accounts, and other critical access risks to strengthen the overall IAM program.

Benefits of Identity Analytics

Leveraging identity analytics helps reveal risks and policy violations, so companies can put a plan in place to effectively close the gap on identity-related access risks and enforce stronger identity governance policies across the business. Identity analytics empower organizations to quickly uncover and remediate these access risks and bolster overall risk management. This is applicable not only to the risk that is easy to identify, but access risk that is hidden from direct view, or inherited in a complex environment.

Use Cases for Identity Analytics

One critical application for identity analytics is supporting cleanup efforts for user access and entitlements. Identity analytics used in cleanup efforts set the stage to address immediate threats, improve ongoing provisioning, and enhance governance and privileged access management across the enterprise.

Identity analytics have also propelled improved periodic access reviews, especially micro-certifications. Micro-certifications are real-time access reviews done at a point in time for a specific user or small set of users, focused on access where risk is seen.