Cyber Threat actors are becoming more skewed and sophisticated in their effort to compromise an organization’s network, steal confidential data, disrupt service and Ransome to cause havoc or get paid millions of dollars in some cases, based on their motivation.
Cloud identity and access management is a cloud-based security framework that verifies users and controls their access rights, including issuing and denying access privileges. A cloud-based identity and access management authentication solution can help businesses secure and manage access to resources across all domains and platforms, from public and private clouds to on-premises infrastructure.
What is Cloud-based identity and access management?
Cloud IAM is a service that controls a user’s necessary permissions and access to cloud resources by allowing access to cloud services and resources securely. Cloud Identity and Access Management will enable a user to authenticate irrespective of the location and provides secure access to cloud resource, APIs, and On-prem resources while increasing agility, speed, and efficiency.
IAM solutions can be integrated to provide a holistic solution to an enterprise. IAM allows the user to configure access based on your company’s specific operational and security needs. You can combine various IAM features like IAM users, groups, and IAM roles to achieve this.
It is worthy of note that managing users in a large organization with varying access levels to an ever-changing set of services and maintaining the principle of least privilege can be very challenging. Managing separate Cloud-based identity and access management roles and groups for these users and resources adds another layer of complexity.
Identity and access management featuresÂ
IAM Users
An identity and access management user can create an identity on a cloud service platform like AWS or GCP, representing the person or application that interacts with cloud services and resources. When a new IAM user is created, it usually will have a name and credentials but no associated permissions. However, the IAM user must be granted the necessary permission to perform any action on any Cloud Service platform.
IAM Policy
An identity and access management policy is a document that denies or grants permission to a cloud service platform services and resources. IAM policies allow the administrator to customize users’ level of access to resources.
IAM Groups
An identity and access management group are a collection of IAM users. An IAM policy can be assigned to an IAM group, where all users in the IAM group are granted permissions specified by the IAM policy. Giving IAM policies to an IAM group can also make adjusting permissions when an employee moves into a different position easier.
IAM roles
An identity and access management role is an identity that a user can assume to gain temporary access to permissions. An IAM user, application, or service must be granted permission to switch to the IAM role before it can assume an identity and access management role. Users who take an IAM role abandon all prior permissions they had under an earlier role and assume the new role permissions.
What Are The Benefits Of Cloud IAM?
Cloud IAM Reduce IT Infrastructure and Support Costs
With the advent of the remote work policy, more people are now working from home using personal devices for work, learning, and other activities. More than before, IT teams are now required to manage more applications, resources, and devices.
The cost associated with maintaining an On-prem IAM by employing and keeping in-house identity experts and purchasing and maintaining equipment continues to surge. In contrast, The Identity as a Service or managed cloud service provider for cloud IAM has significantly reduced costs.
Flexibility and Scalability
Cloud-based identity and access management solutions are available as SaaS. They are easy to scale for new users, like when an organization adds multiple users at a new location. The Cloud-based IAM enhances security and reduces reliance on passwords. It also reduces the potential data breaches from compromised credentials with capabilities like two-factor authentication and multi-factor authentication.
Improve User Experience
Research has proven that an average person uses about 200 services that require a password or any other form of authentication. Single sign-on makes the login process faster and easier to access the resources needed. Employees access various applications like email, online meetings, HR, finance, etc. Cloud IAM helps employees and other workers seamlessly access the resources they need faster with less friction.
Regulatory Compliance
Cloud IAM assists businesses in complying with data privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Protection Act, as well as open banking rules like the Payment Service Directive 2. IAM enables you to adjust and maintain compliance as regulations change quickly and new requirements are implemented.
