Identity Access Management – A Corporate Armor!

Considering the emerging technology trends and huge chunks of data to be managed, it is crucial to have a robust identity and access management strategy in any IT Enterprise. Strong Identity Access Management (IAM) strategies enable employees to be productive while leveraging concrete security measures. In addition, with increasing cloud computing, the complexity of the access measures is also increasing.

A user can most certainly have all the rights and privileges to access resources; however, they may tend to make use of it in an abnormal way. What do you do when a user has access to different enterprise system privileges which are ideally not required? How can you stop the user from not accessing the unwanted? This introduces one of the common challenges faced in the IT industry.

Today, even the robust IAM strategies live in silos across various departments, such as application development, information security, and regulatory compliance. This is because each department tends to customize the access privileges according to their IT requirements and departmental goals. This leads to uneven provisioning of access rights causing productivity loss and data breaches.

It is all about providing access to information resources to the users, while successfully confining unauthorized access to the company’s confidential data. Identity Access Management is a self-sufficient way to secure your confidential data, and it is capable of sorting out some common yet distracting challenges. Here are some of the challenges and their solutions:

1. Manual Provisioning: There is a simple rule in any enterprise; on joining, the longer it takes for an employee to gain access to necessary business information and applications, the lesser is the employee’s productivity. On the other side, delay in revoking the access permissions of an employee who has left the company can lead to a damaging impact on data security. Manual provisioning is tedious and time-consuming, especially in a large organization. It is an inefficient way of managing user identities and access. The trouble of manual provisioning can be solved using fully automated by Sentri provisioning and de-provisioning process. This enhances the enforcement of strong security policies while eradicating human errors.
2. Widespread Workforce: Companies today are recruiting a talented workforce without keeping any geographical limitations. This means, employees from across the country or even globe work remotely, away from the office premise. Sometimes employees leverage technological convenience and prefer to work through mobile/cloud computing. This becomes a challenge for the IT team which now has lower visibility and control over employees’ work practices. This challenge can be overcome using a centrally managed SentriIAM strategy with options for geofencing using our partner integrations, which brings back the visibility and controls over the work practices of employees working remotely.
3. Using Personalized Devices: Along with working remotely, employees also prefer using their own devices to connect with the corporate network for professional reasons. The IT team faces a challenge here, which is to quickly govern the device’s access permissions to protect the organization’s confidential information, without hampering employee’s productivity. Moreover, the level of difficulty to manage access privileges increases when the IT team has to figure out who has access to corporate data and what all devices are used to access it. This challenge can only be sorted by setting guidelines and regulatory compliance regarding granting and revoking access to corporate-owned devices.
4. Simplified Auditing: The IT department is usually in a mess when it comes to providing comprehensive reports to the auditors. The reports have to support the data that determines the access privileges for specific employees, approvals for expanded access, and tracking and documentation of who has access to what. This becomes a cumbersome task to manage on a regular basis. Automating the audit reporting can simplify the practice of report generation and ease the overall auditing process.

Businesses need to keep their data under rigid scrutiny to protect it against fatal attacks both from outside and within the conventional security parameters surrounding the data. Any business is all about offering value to the customers and it thrives only when the employees and customers are both empowered with the right kind of privileges. Hence, businesses need to be ready to face any challenge and make use of the underlying opportunities. A strong IAM can effectively support the compliance and regulatory standards of an organization and help it function smoothly.

About Sentri

Sentri is a one-stop solution to all your IAG (Identity Access Governance), IRM (Integrated Risk Management) and GRC (Governance Risk Compliance) requirements. Our Intelligent Enterprise Identity Platforms are built to provide holistic data protection against data breaches, identity thefts, and financial frauds. We realize the value of a robust IT landscape, which acts as a strong spine for any business. To nurture the businesses, we offer path-breaking customizable access solutions that empower identity management, securing apps and data infrastructure for cloud and on-premise platforms.

For more information about our products and solutions, visit www.sentriapp.com