As of 2022, most businesses’ primary concern is security as cyber crimes have been skyrocketing since remote work has become a new work model for them. Each successful data breach often has severe consequences on businesses. According to Statista, the global average cost of data breaches was 3.86 million dollars in 2021.
This amount is much more bigger than small to mid businesses can afford. Additionally, data breaches can harm a business's reputation, and these kinds of incidents often result in losing customers’ trust in the company.
In today’s world, businesses are up against the increased risk of cyberattacks. Additionally, every business is obligated to meet compliance regulations and industry standards regardless of its size. These regulations and standards require businesses to secure sensitive data and put identity access management policies in place.
So, identity access management tools have become a necessity to meet standards and create a much more secure working environment for everyone. Let’s see in detail what is identity access management, and why you need it.
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What Is Identity Access Management?
Identity and Access Management (IAM) refers to the tools that are used to police access privileges of users for reaching corporate resources both in the network and corporate perimeter.
IAM tools help businesses to both authenticate users and control their access privileges in the network. By implementing IAM tools, IT admins can set access privileges for each user and authenticate their identities before granting access. So, IAM enables secure access to users and prevents unauthorized users from gaining access to corporate networks.
The main purpose of IAM tools is to give users a minimum amount of access for a short period of time to reach the necessary resources in accordance with their job roles and duties. This way, only some authorized users can laterally move in the network and reach areas that contain sensitive data.
IAM tools enable wider visibility across your corporate network, meaning IT admins can monitor users’ activities, the files they access, etc. Additionally, IT admins can control all the privileges of users and limit or remove their access any time they want.
In short, when IAM tools are integrated well, they can mitigate the security risks associated with internal and external entities, and minimize the surface areas of possible cyber attacks. Lastly, IAM tools and policies are both critical for meeting compliance standards and keeping corporate resources and networks safe.
Why Do Businesses Need Identity Access Management?
In today’s world, businesses can’t give employees unlimited access to corporate networks. Employees don't have to reach all the files and sensitive data that you hold. Implicit trust that is given to employees is extremely risky because they can use their access for malicious purposes or they can unintentionally cause data breaches.
Nowadays, many businesses use the cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid infrastructures to store data and host applications. With the increasing number of remote employees and cloud usage, the corporate networks’ complexity has grown exponentially.
Naturally, securing end-point users, and corporate resources in the cloud and on-premise data centers have become more important than ever because cyber crimes have been increasing drastically since the pandemic began. Meanwhile, compliance regulations and standards demand certain identity access management policies to secure confidential data of employees and customers.
When all of these reasons are taken into account, implementing a modern cloud-based IAM solution can reduce the complexity of your networks, and helps you meet compliance requirements while keeping corporate networks and resources safe.
Lastly, modern IAM architecture can help a business to mitigate internal and external security threats. Let’s see some of the identity & access management best practices.
Identity & Access Management Practices
1- Implementing Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solutions provide the best identity access management capabilities. Zero Trust is based on the principle “never trust, always verify” meaning nobody can access corporate networks and resources before authenticating their identities.
Zero Trust gives employees the minimum amount of access to reach only essential resources and data to perform their duties well, and it prohibits lateral movement of users.
2- Integrating Multi-Factor Authentication
Authentication of users is one of the main goals of IAM. Integrating MFA into IAM tools is essential because MFA solutions provide two-layered authentication that ensures only authorized users can gain access to networks.
Generally, MFA requires users to verify their identities via biometrics, SMS text messages, emails, etc. In short, MFA solutions are required for well-functioning IAM systems.
Last Words
As of 2022, every business is up against the increased risks of cyberattacks. Implementing modern cloud-based Identity Access Management tools is really important because it strengthens your cybersecurity posture.
Modern IAM tools can help you mitigate the security risks as it prevents unauthorized users from gaining access to your corporate networks and resources.