According to the NIST Authentication study, there were 23 authentication events every day on a variety of systems and apps. Despite this, many businesses do not have a password policy or implement password best practices. The reckless behavior of employees towards passwords complicates things even further.
Most employees use the same username, email address, and password to log in to multiple websites. The same goes for mobile apps as well. What is even worse is that most of them set simple, easy-to-remember passwords which are also easier for hackers to guess. To top it all off, they even write down their passwords on paper and even share them with their colleagues in some cases. All this could have serious security repercussions not only for the employees but also for employers.
To overcome all these challenges, enterprises must adopt an identity and access management system or choose an identity as a service solution provider in order to synchronize passwords. The problem with identity and access management systems is that most of their approaches are design and implement by ignoring cloud and mobile use cases. This makes these approaches difficult to integrate with cloud applications and mobile access hence reducing the effectiveness of identity and access management systems.
You might be wondering how I can choose the best-identified service solution. Here are six things that you need to consider.
Flexibility
Irrespective of which identifies as a service solution you choose, it should be flexible enough to provide access to corporate identities managed both in the house and in the cloud. Most businesses are still reluctant to embrace cloud directories to manage access because it forces you to move some of your data to the cloud and out of your control. If your identity and access management solution don’t support an active directory method, it won’t be the right fit for your organization.
Single Sign-On
Single Sign-On allows users to log in to apps whether they are host on the on-premises server or on the cloud through federat identity. The number of different apps and services we use daily makes it difficult for users to remember passwords for all of them. They either use password management tools or implement single sign-on.
Your single sign-on solution must streamline workflows and boost user satisfaction and should consolidate and deliver access to all the apps from every platform. This can not only improve employee productivity but can also improve security. Instead of using a username and password, federated single sign-on uses a time-sensitive token for verifying and authenticating users. What’s more, your employees are less likely to lose access to their accounts with a single sign-on than they do with a username and password.
Secure Access to Enterprise Identities
Verizon’s data breach incident report showed that 80% of attacks occurred due to compromised credentials. This happens because the traditional security route most businesses take focuses on securing networks, cheap dedicated server hosting, firewalls, or the best VPS server but tend to neglect passwords and other user credentials. Enterprise network monitoring helps you optimize network performance and achieve an error-free network. To secure access, businesses will have adopted a zero-trust security strategy. This means that everything whether it is a user, endpoint, or device must be verified first before granting access.
Choose an identity as a service solution that provides comprehensive identity protection for employees, customers, and partners. When you have a strong identity as a service solution in place that can secure everything, attackers are less likely to compromise one device, escalate their privileges and gain access to your corporate network or critical business data.
App Access Lifecycle Management
Businesses can save time and money by automating account creation processes for cloud applications, grant role-based access, and authorization management. This can free up valuable IT resources by reducing the burden and allowing them to focus more on value-driven tasks. It can also come in handy when you must offboard users as their accounts will be delete and their entries will be remove from the group automatically.
This way, you can remove access immediately, reduce the risk of insider threats and fulfill compliance and security requirements at the same time. By leveraging provisioning, you can deploy the right applications and minimize the number of help desk calls. You can also implement role-based licensing and authorization management for the most frequently used applications.
Never Ignore Mobile Access Management
With more users accessing the cloud applications through their mobile devices, it is important for businesses to maintain security while offering functionality to their users. This covers everything from deploying the right client apps for all devices to delivering a more streamlined experience. Unfortunately, most identity as a service solution lags behind when it comes to supporting mobile devices. The problem is that these systems are not design with mobile devices in mind.
Select an identity as a service solution that enables users to add their mobile devices and secure those devices with strong authentication methods. More importantly, the IDaaS solution should also allow administrators to apply device-specific group policies. Identity as a service solution of your choice should combine both web-based and mobile client app management, so users get full access irrespective of which apps they are trying to access.
Implement Risk-Based Multi-Factor Authentication
It is quite common for employees to access services outside of their corporate network as well as use multiple devices to do that. If that is not enough then, the password they use to log in to their accounts is not the safest user authentication method as it can easily be stolen or guessed by hackers. This can increase the security risk manifold.
That is where implementing adaptive and risk-based multi-factor authentication can come in handy. This can protect your cloud as well as cheap dedicated hosting. Your identity as a service solution should have access policies in place and must consider the context in which access is request to efficiently get over emerging access risks.
What factors do you consider when choosing an identity as a service solution? Let us know in the comments section below.
