Identity and access management tools are integral to maintaining data security in the enterprise. Here you’ll find information on passwords, authentication and Web access control.
Identity and access management (IAM) is a framework for business processes that facilitates the management of electronic or digital identities. The framework includes the organizational policies for managing digital identity as well as the technologies needed to support identity management.
With IAM technologies, IT managers can control user access to critical information within their organizations. Identity and access management products offer role-based access control, which lets system administrators regulate access to systems or networks based on the roles of individual users within the enterprise.
Having known access is the ability of an individual user to perform a specific task, such as view, create or modify a file. Therefore roles are defined according to job competency, authority and responsibility within the enterprise.
IAM technologies can be used to initiate, capture, record and manage user identities and their related access permissions in an automated manner. This ensures that access privileges are granted according to one interpretation of policy and all individuals and services are properly authenticated, authorized and audited. Since companies that properly manage identities have greater control of user access, they’re able to reduce the risks of internal and external data breaches.
Automating IAM systems allows businesses to operate more efficiently by reducing the effort, time and money that would be required to manage access to their networks manually or via individual access controls that aren’t connected to centralized management systems.
Using a common platform for identity and access management enables the same security policies to be applied across all the different devices and operating platforms used by the enterprise. In terms of security, use of an IAM framework can make it easier to enforce policies around user authentication, validation and privileges and address issues regarding privilege creep.
By implementing identity access management tools and following related best practices, your company can gain a competitive edge.
IAM systems help companies better comply with government regulations by allowing them to show that corporate information isn’t being misused. With identity and access management tools, companies can also demonstrate that any data needed for auditing can be made available on-demand.