Identity Access Management (IAM)

Modern businesses are more dependent on digital technologies, cloud services, and the remote workforce. On a daily basis, employees need to access corporate resources and data in order to perform their duties effectively. Not every employee needs to have access to sensitive areas in corporate networks. Because when employees can reach all the files, documents, and confidential data that a company holds, compromised employee identities can lead to data breaches more frequently. To mitigate the security risks associated with external and internal entities, Identity Access Management (IAM) solutions are needed.

Additionally, today all sizes of businesses are obligated to safeguard confidential data that they collect, store, and share on a daily basis. The integrity of confidential data is regulated under the international and local compliance laws, and standards. These regulations give explicit directions, guidelines, and requirements for safeguarding confidential data.

Compliance laws like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Payment Service Directive (PSD 2) oblige businesses to meet requirements at all times. Any negligence of compliance standards can lead to severe fines and penalties. That’s why implementing modern IAM solutions is a must for all sizes of businesses. Before explaining the top four benefits of IAM solutions, first, let’s briefly explain what Identity Access Management is.

What Is Identity Access Management (IAM)?

Identity Access Management (IAM) security solutions refer to the tools that are used for creating policies and procedures to set access privileges for every user, device, or application. When they need to reach corporate resources and networks, IAM solutions are responsible for authenticating their identities via multi-factor authentication, biometrics, or single sign-on (SSO) tools.

Authentication tools can be seen as an extra layer of security as it requires users to give more additional credentials such as in-app approval, authentication codes, biometrics, etc. By using authentication tools, businesses can mitigate the security risks because even if cyber criminals possess a user’s ID and password, they won’t be able to access corporate resources before giving more credentials like authentication codes.

After the verification processes of users, IAM tools grant access to these users in accordance with their access privileges. In essence, IAM solutions ensure that only authorized users can access corporate networks, and they can only reach the necessary resources to perform their duties effectively, nothing more.

Additionally, IAM solutions allow businesses to administer lateral movement policies and user privileges. With IAM tools, businesses can have greater control over users’ access privileges and their activities. For instance, IT admins can see who is accessing which data when, and from where. Real-time monitoring really helps businesses detect, and respond to anomalies rapidly.

Top Benefits of Identity Access Management

1- Improved Network Security

Accomplishing and maintaining network security is critical these days, and IAM solutions deliver the features that improve network security. To maintain the integrity of corporate networks, monitoring and surveillance are required. IAM solutions provide monitoring, and user provisioning features that allow businesses to see employees, customers, business associates, or subcontractors’ activities in real-time. Detecting anomalies and abnormal behaviors allow businesses to isolate threats quickly.

While using IAM solutions, unauthorized access attempts can be prevented easily. Additionally, IAM solutions enable secure app access and identity compromise protection feature that essentially prevents users from having compromised credentials by solid authentication procedures and policies. All of these help businesses to have improved network security that is easy to maintain via unified management.

2- Minimizing Security Risks

The main purpose of implementing identity access management solutions is to minimize security risks associated with internal and external entities. IAM solutions mitigate the internal security risks by limiting users’ access range within the corporate networks. In today’s world, businesses can’t ignore the fact that their internal staff can use their access privileges for malicious goals. That’s why not everybody in an organization needs to have access to sensitive areas in networks. So, IAM solutions by design minimize the internal security risks.

Additionally, lateral movement policies can help businesses to mitigate external security risks. For instance, if a cyber attack occurs, lateral movement policies won’t allow malicious actors to roam within the corporate networks, and they will be stuck in a single area. In this regard, IAM solutions will limit the surface areas of potential attacks and won’t allow malicious actors to cause further damage.

3- Establishing Complete Compliance

Today, most compliance regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Payment Service Directive (PSD 2), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) require businesses to implement some identity access management tools to safeguard confidential data. Additionally, in any negligence of these compliance requirements, regulators can apply fines and penalties. For instance, infringements of HIPAA measures can leave a company to pay fines that can be up to 1,5 million dollars annually.

In an era where regulators apply severe fines for every infringement of rules, and measures, businesses can’t afford to catch off-guard by compliance regulations, and cyber attacks. In this regard, IAM solutions can help businesses establish complete compliance whether they need to comply with GDPR, HIPAA, or PSD 2. Lastly, as new compliance standards come into play, IAM solutions allow businesses to be prepared and align new measures with existing systems.

4- Potential Cost Reductions

Modern cloud-based identity access management solutions can help businesses lower operational costs because modern IAM services eliminate the need to buy and maintain an on-premise setup. In other words, cloud-based IAM solutions don’t require any additional on-premise infrastructure, and it saves time, money, and resources that are spent on the maintenance of hardware-based IAM solutions. So, modern IAM solutions can be cost-efficient, and help businesses reduce costs in the long run.

Last Remarks

Today all sizes of businesses are obligated to protect confidential information that they collect, store, and share daily. Modern identity access management solutions allow businesses to improve security across all corporate assets, and establish complete compliance seamlessly. To cope with modern cyber threats, and security risks, businesses should implement IAM solutions and protect their business from top to bottom.

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