- Technology

How Cloud Identity Management Enhances Data Security and Compliance

Cloud IAM delivers capabilities that eliminate risks from passwords, reduce the risk of data breaches and enable more agile access to applications for customers, employees and partners. Examples include adaptive multifactor authentication, passwordless authentication and single sign-on.

CIG solutions automate analysis of cloud infrastructure entitlements to detect toxic combinations of permissions that are near-impossible to identify manually. They also provide automated risk remediation.

Security

In the days before cloud computing, cyber criminals would often try to access sensitive data by stealing an employee’s password or physically entering the office building. But now that companies store so much of their data in the cloud, they must find other ways to protect it from hacking and accidental disclosure.

One way is to implement strong identity protocols that verify user identification before they have access to the company’s data. For example, some businesses require users to use a complex password with multiple verification layers to gain data access. In contrast, others use adaptive multifactor authentication that uses trusted information to validate incoming credentials and reduce risk.

Another security strategy is regularly assessing all privileged access rights and lowering them when possible. While maintaining the same degree of security and compliance as enterprise-class solutions, a company like Tools4Ever offers an easy-to-use platform to manage identities and entitlements in the cloud at a cheaper total cost of ownership and faster deployment.

Compliance

Cloud Identity Management helps meet regulatory compliance with the ability to control data access based on pre-established policies securely. The operational areas of IAM include authentication management, authorization management and provisioning storage.

You can easily manage user identities and entitlements by implementing IAM solutions into your cloud environment. This reduces the risk of misconfigured entitlements, often leading to cyberattacks causing data breaches.

As a result, it’s easier for you to comply with GDPR and PCI regulations and other data protection laws. This reduces your vulnerability to fines and penalties.

Cloud IAM also provides other business benefits, such as simplifying application access by enabling single sign-on (SSO). This gives users one set of credentials across all your applications. It also allows you to step up authentication controls with multifactor authentication enablement. This is a must-have when it comes to managing identities in the cloud. This provides a strong layer of security that can protect your company from hackers who try to steal passwords and credentials from vulnerable apps and services.

Automation

With IAM, you can automate and centralize user account creation and management for on-premises and cloud applications. This simplifies and streamlines identity processes to drive greater productivity. You can also implement unified access policies with single sign-on and multifactor authentication enablement for your users while reducing risks from compromised credentials.

To help you monitor what your users are doing and make sure they have the appropriate level of access to company data, IAM offers a complete audit trail of user rights, authorization, delegation, and removal. Recommender, a machine-learning solution that automatically deletes pointless permissions from your users’ profiles, enables admins to identify overly liberal access quickly.

Easily manage your entire workforce with IAM by connecting your on-premises and cloud identities with a centralized directory service. Streamline user onboarding with role certifications that speed up compliance processes by reviewing the links between users, roles and resources for better segregation of duties.

Flexibility

Cloud IAM solutions provide benefits centered around security, compliance and automation with a lower cost of ownership and faster deployment. These capabilities make securing data in cloud services possible without investing in on-prem infrastructure and resources, making business agility a priority.

IAM solutions like passwordless authentication or single sign-on help users gain access to more applications with less hassle and reduce the risk of credentials being breached. Two-factor or multifactor authentication also reduces reliance on passwords and helps to mitigate data breaches by verifying that an individual is who they claim to be.

Managing the proliferation of identity and access entitlements in the cloud is complex, and traditional methods must be more effective.