Talk:Identity and access management

Identity and Access Management: Core Practices to Secure Digital Identities

CONTENTS

∙ Introduction
∙ About IAM
∙ Key Components of IAM
∙ Core Practices
∙ Conclusion

Identities have quietly become the most critical digital assets in the modern era. And whether management knows it or not, many of the most crucial conversations they have with IT are really conversations about identities.

A fast-moving, efficient, and secure business orbits around successfully managing your team’s identities — and it always has. But today, there are more high-quality corporate resources to connect to than ever before. This diversification of resources contributes to a fundamental shift in the Identity and Access Management market (IAM). If you’re not keeping up, then you’re putting your company at risk of experiencing breaches, losing productivity, and falling behind the competition.

This document doesn’t just show how the Identity and Access Management landscape is shifting. It also shows you how to shift along with it. It’s a brave new world of IAM — and you can use it to your advantage to move your business forward even faster and more efficiently.

ABOUT IAM

Let’s start by taking a look at everything IT needs to provision access to in the modern era:

• Internal applications: Apps are developed in-house and stored on-premises (or with cloud infrastructure providers).

• Third-party apps (SaaS): These are web apps such as Salesforce, Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), Microsoft 365, GitHub, and Slack.

• Cloud infrastructure: This includes cloud servers from providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP.

• Wi-Fi: The all-important internet.

• Documents and/or files: This includes text files, spreadsheets, PDFs, and reports.

• Devices: This includes devices such as Windows, Mac, and Linux.

For years, IT has tried to use legacy identity management systems to control this jumble of new IT resources, even though that means a proliferation of unmanaged identities. Legacy identity management systems are not designed to connect natively to many modern IT resources, like SaaS apps, cloud infrastructure, and Mac devices. 

The identity crisis has been simmering for a decade now, and it’s reaching a boil. This is particularly true now, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced a drastic acceleration in remote work and increased reliance on cloud-based resources. IT administrators around the world are getting overwhelmed and fed up. But here’s the good news: In recent years, there’s been concerted effort to create better identity management solutions for the enterprise.

We’re on the brink of an identity revolution. If you take advantage of it now, you won’t just make life easier for everyone in the IT department — you’ll also get a leg up on the competition because your entire team will be more productive and secure. Now, let’s take a look at key components of the IAM market and assess your current identity management strategy.

CONCLUSION

When people look back on the trajectory of the Identity and Access Management space decades from now, they’ll see an inflection point — the moment when identities stopped proliferating out endlessly and began to consolidate again. The future of identities is simpler, more efficient, and more secure.

As more and more resources move to the cloud, there’s no way around the fact that it’s the most efficient way to manage identities.

But what about security? It might seem like the cloud is an easy target, but with correct security practices applied, the opposite is true. So move forward into the new world of cloud identity management with confidence. High costs and insufficient management are in the rear-view. Better security and authoritative identities lie ahead.