What is the Need for IAM Security?
Those days when we used “123” as our password has passed and they are long behind this current time now. The current industry seems quick in adopting practices that demand longer passwords consisting of the upper, lower, and special characters as well as digits. However, analytics and IT professionals can identify any suspicious activities on their networks to identify any such malicious attempts with common user patterns as per the password patterns as well as changes. It is also effortless for hackers to crack any passwords posing a severe threat to cloud security nowadays. Users tend to reuse same-to-same passwords for their multiple accounts and different sites. It rotates several passwords, and adjusts those very slightly when they are forced by the email account to change those passwords; they might add a digit to replace their existing password. Such passwords with low complexity can be easily cracked in a day, passwords with medium complexity can be cracked within a week, and passwords with high complexity take much longer time, a month or so. So, the best practices for IAM Security, thus, include the following in terms of passwords:
Best Practices for IAM Security
- Enforcing a policy of password-expiration
- Educating users on issues like password strength, password sharing, ULSD, and common patterns to be avoided
- Using extra authentication means like 2-factor authentication through text to phone; and notification about any suspicious login
Identity and Access Management Challenges
- A chief one is to gain control over identities. In an organization, it is challenging to discover where all the identity repositories exist owing to shadow IT, IT commercialization and many SaaS apps continually emerging into the fold. Firms now have to achieve complete visibility into all Cloud IAM parts. Once gained, they can very effectively manage those from one centralized view helping them to minimize any cloud security risks.
- One more significant challenge is with the assignment of risks to applications, systems, and users, which calls for prioritizing people as well as data as per sensitivity and meaning to focus more on protecting what matters the most, first and foremost.
Setting up the Identity Management System for a Network
- Assess present IT architecture
- Access future needs
- List standard vs. in-house apps along with their version details having to be integrated with IAM
- Make sure that there is compatibility among the present Operating system, 3rd party apps, web servers, as well as identity management tools
- Try to integrate the access control devices (like card readers as well as other access hardware with the IAM solution
- Lucidly designate user roles and define each user/group’s access privileges as well as restrictions imposed
- Assess the needed required customization level for IAM to fit into the company
- Verify that your system is complying with any of the laws/regulatory needs of local/federal government
CASB Vendors Providing IAM Security Solutions
Top IAM vendors provide both enterprise IAM systems along with their cloud-based versions as well. In addition to these, there also are numerous source IAM solutions available out there.
CloudCodes’ IAM Solution For Enterprise Security
We, at CloudCodes, take pride in being one of the leading vendors in this domain. The IAM security feature of our CASB solution is a type of personal verification, which is done by Password Management that is used to put check on data breaches that happen usually. CloudCodes Identity Management solution performs the following to curtail data leak incidences:
- Better user control through provisioning/de-provisioning users via a single console
- More than one password policy is implemented for defining password complexities.
- Use existing Microsoft AD as IdP to the system for AD integration
- Multi-factor authentication is enabled with the help of secret questions, OTP on SMS/email
- The biometric factor is implemented leveraging fingerprint-scan supported on mobiles
- Windows login support for users
Role of Identity Management in Cloud Security
Identity management (IM) is a term that refers to the information system being used within the enterprise. This represents the systematic management of any single identity and provides authentication, privileges, authorization, and roles of the enterprise boundaries. The primary purpose is to upgrade security and productivity by decreasing the total cost, repetitive tasks, and system downtime. Identity management in cloud computing covers all types of users who can work with defined devices under different circumstances. Various identity management (IM) services imply that wired and wireless users can support directory integration. The availability of BYOD makes it a time-saving service for the individual user. Further, there are some additional security services, which are mentioned below:
- Access Control
- Password Manager
- Digital Identity Management
- Single Sign-On