While identity and access management (IAM) has always been vital to cybersecurity, its prominence has grown as IT networks have become more complex and businesses have embraced cloud computing. Indeed, a robust IAM strategy is imperative for all organizations today to reduce the risk of costly security breaches, compliance penalties, and business disruptions.
This article explores what IAM entails and how organizations can build an effective IAM framework to secure their sensitive data and systems according to modern best practices.
Understanding Identity and Access Management
Identity and access management (IAM) is the practice of managing digital identities and their access. As its name implies, IAM has two components. The first is identity management, which ensures that only the right identities exist and are accurate. Identities are often individuals, such as employees, contractors, customers, partners, and vendors. However, they can include service and computer accounts that access specific applications and services. The second component is access management: ensuring that each identity has exactly the right access privileges to sensitive information and other resources based on the requirements of its role or roles in the organization and closely monitoring access activity for threats.
Accordingly, a comprehensive IAM strategy involves a wide range of processes, such as:
- Managing user identities
- Granting each identity exactly the correct access privileges
- Establishing robust security policies, such as requiring strong and unique passwords
- Implementing appropriate access controls
- Monitoring the activity of users to spot potential threats
- Enabling users to access multiple systems with one set of credentials or single sign-on (SSO)
These processes are not one-time events; they require constant attention. Accordingly, modern IAM solutions that provide automation are vital to success. For instance, a good tool will streamline the user provisioning and deprovisioning processes, ensuring that each account’s access rights remain accurate even as the user shifts roles and business applications are adopted or retired. This improves operational efficiency while reducing the risk of human error, allowing companies to focus on their core business objectives while maintaining a robust security posture.
The Importance of IAM
IAM is a core strategy for reducing an organization’s risk from ransomware attacks, destructive attacks, data theft, and other cybercrime. The cost of a single data breach is staggering: In 2023, the global average reached $4.45 million, a 15% increase over three years. This total cost includes multiple factors, including:
- Direct financial losses — Recovering from a data breach can result in significant direct costs, from costly overtime and consulting to new hardware and software solutions.
- Reputation damage — Successful cyberattacks can erode customer trust and damage a company’s brand, leading to loss of business and reduced market value.
- Operational disruption — Cyber incidents can cause system downtime and data loss that interrupt critical business processes.
- Legal and regulatory consequences—Companies that fail to protect sensitive information can face steep fines and legal action.
- Loss of competitive advantage — Theft of valuable trade secrets or other intellectual property can compromise an organization’s core business model.
The Benefits and Value of IAM
In addition to helping enterprises mitigate the risk of costly data breaches, strong IAM governance offers many other benefits. They include:
- Improved user experience — IAM simplifies access to multiple systems through single sign-on (SSO), reducing the need for multiple passwords and streamlining the login application.
- Increased productivity — Automated user provisioning and de-provisioning help ensure that users have timely access to the necessary resources, allowing them to focus on their tasks without unnecessary delays.
- Reduction in password-related issues — IAM systems often provide self-service password management capabilities and tools like password managers, reducing password reset support requests and minimizing user disruption and frustration.
- Compliance with regulations — Identity and access governance helps organizations adhere to increasingly strict regulatory requirements by maintaining detailed audit trails, enforcing appropriate access controls, and enabling swift threat detection and response.
- Reduction in IT costs — Automating routine tasks reduces the burden on IT support teams by offloading manual processes, leading to significant cost savings and more efficient resource allocation.
Faulty IAM Strategies and Data Breaches
Traditionally, IAM focused on building a walled perimeter around the network to keep threat actors out. This approach is no longer effective for multiple reasons. First, nearly 7 in 10 breaches (68%) today involve the human element, according to the Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report. Examples include errors in which users falling prey to social engineering campaigns or accidentally email sensitive data to inappropriate recipients, as well as the intentional misuse of access privileges to steal data or sabotage systems.
Second, IT ecosystems have grown far more complex: According to the 2024 Netwrix Hybrid Security Trends Report, 74% of organizations have a hybrid IT infrastructure across on-premises and cloud environments, and another 11% are fully in the cloud. With this embrace of cloud computing, the traditional network perimeter has evaporated, making identity the new security perimeter.
Perimeter-based approaches to IAM also often failed to address internal threats properly. For example, granting each user local admin rights on their assigned desktop was common practice. This approach is convenient for users, and IT support personnel since it enables users to manage their devices according to their needs. However, it also significantly increases the risk of security incidents. For example, a user with local admin privileges can accidentally or deliberately alter critical system configurations or install malicious software. If an attacker compromises the user account, they can gain full control over the device, a solid foothold from which to complete a successful attack.
IAM Solutions, Tools, and Technologies
Building an IAM framework that enhances security, supports compliance with regulatory requirements, and maximizes business continuity requires using the right strategies and following best practices. Here are the key elements to understand.
Fundamental Principles
A core strategy for any IAM framework is the principle of least privilege (PoLP): Each identity must be granted only the access rights necessary for its job functions. Minimizing access privileges is a best practice because it reduces the attack surface by limiting the damage an account can do, whether in the hands of its intended user or after being compromised by an adversary.
A common technique for enforcing the PoLP accurately and efficiently is role-based access control (RBAC). Assigning access rights directly to users one at a time is both time-intensive and highly prone to errors that introduce security risks. Modern organizations use role-based access control (RBAC) to overcome these issues. With role-based access control, the security team establishes a set of roles, such as Helpdesk Technician and Sales Team Member. It grants each role the appropriate permissions to data, applications and other resources. Each user is then assigned the appropriate roles based on their responsibilities and inherits the associated access rights.
While every account represents an exploitable pathway for an intruder or insider threat, some accounts require greater attention than others — namely, accounts granted powerful privileges. Accordingly, modern IAM strategies extend the PoLP by implementing privileged access management (PAM). A PAM solution helps minimize the risk from privileged accounts, such as those held by IT administrators, by providing features like strict role-based access control, session monitoring, credential vaulting, and multifactor authentication (MFA). The most effective solutions replace standing privileged accounts with just-in-time access for specific tasks.
Tools and Features
At a more technical level, here are some of the most common identity and access management components used today:
- Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) — An XML-based standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties, particularly for web-based SSO
- OpenID Connect — An identity layer built on OAuth 2.0 that allows clients to verify user identity and obtain basic profile information
- System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) — A standardized protocol for automating the exchange of user identity information between systems, which facilitates user provisioning tasks
Monitoring, Auditing, and Reporting
While properly managing identities and user access is vital to any IAM strategy, implementing effective monitoring, auditing, and reporting is equally essential. Effective monitoring helps security teams detect threats like malicious insiders and compromised accounts and respond in time to minimize damage. Detailed auditing enables the identification of security gaps like inactive accounts and is required for compliance with regulations such as GDPR, PCI-DSS, and HIPAA. Efficient reporting is vital to periodic access reviews that enable adherence to the principle of least privilege.
IAM Threats and Challenges
To implement an effective IAM security strategy, you must understand the common threats you must protect against.
- Password compromise. Adversaries use many methods to steal user passwords. For example, there are brute force attacks in which hackers systematically test various passwords until they find the correct one or they get locked out. This method is particularly effective against accounts with simple or commonly used passwords.
- Credential stuffing. Attackers will attempt to log on with username and password combinations leaked in other breaches. This attack capitalizes on the common user practice of reusing passwords across different accounts. Defending against these threats involves IAM practices like strong password policies, MFA, and continuous monitoring for suspicious activity.
- Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives. Managing and securing a wide variety of personal devices with different operating systems and security configurations is complex and resource-intensive. As a result, personal devices often lack the security measures enforced on company-owned devices, leaving them more vulnerable to exploitation. In addition, sensitive corporate data accessed on personal devices is at increased risk of being intercepted or leaked, either accidentally or intentionally.
- Supply chain risks. Every service provider and vendor application expands the attack surface for all its customers. Therefore, if any of your supply chain partners lack stringent security practices, your organization incurs additional risk: If the third party is compromised, your organization can suffer a security breach.
IAM Best Practices
Implement Strong Password Policies
A foundational measure for an effective IAM strategy is a robust password policy. The policy requirements should be based on current best practices determined by NIST or other experts. In general, longer and more complex passwords are much harder for adversaries to guess or crack, and frequent password changes further reduce risk. However, organizations need to balance these security benefits with realities like the cost of user lockouts and the risk of workarounds like writing passwords down. A password manager can enable users to comply with a stringent password policy much more easily.
Embrace a Zero Trust Strategy
Another IAM best practice is to embrace a Zero Trust security strategy based on the principle “Never trust; always verify.” Rather than authenticating a user just once, a Zero Trust approach assesses the risk of access requests and, whenever appropriate, requires additional verification of an identity. For example, users attempting to access sensitive data or using an unknown device may be required to complete an MFA step.
Conduct Identity and Access Audits
It’s essential to conduct regular identity and access audits. Audits enable the organization to identify and rectify excessive access privileges, unused accounts, and orphaned security groups, which can pose significant security risks. Audits also provide critical insights into access patterns and potential security gaps, enabling proactive adjustments to IAM policies. Furthermore, detailed audit logs and reports are essential for demonstrating compliance with regulations.
Building a Solid IAM Framework
An IAM strategy and architecture for safeguarding digital resources is analogous to a castle. The castle’s moat represents the network perimeters. Much like a castle that has thick walls and checkpoints, IAM employs layered defenses like role-based access control and multi-factor authentication. Finally, the monitoring controls IAM mirror a castle’s patrols.
Developing an effective IAM framework involves several steps. Below is an outline to get started:
1. Define Objectives and Requirements
- Identify your primary objectives, such as improving security, ensuring compliance, or streamlining user access.
- Discuss requirements and expectations with your stakeholders.
- Identify relevant compliance regulations and requirements.
2. Assess Current State
- Create an inventory of your applications, databases, and systems that require access control.
- Evaluate your current IAM processes, policies, and tools to identify gaps and areas that might require improvement.
- Conduct a risk assessment to understand potential vulnerabilities and related threats.
3. Develop an IAM Strategy
- Develop or update any at-risk IAM policies, including access control, user authentication, and password policies.
- Define user roles and access levels based on job functions and business needs.
- Leverage appropriate IAM solutions and tools, such as single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and privileged access management (PAM).
4. Design the IAM Architecture
- Create an architectural blueprint outlining how any new IAM components integrate with existing IT infrastructure.
- Design the entire lifecycle for digital identities, outlining how they should be created, provisioned, deactivated, and eventually, deleted.
5. Implement IAM Solutions
- Deploy and integrate the selected IAM solutions according to your plan with existing systems, applications, and databases.
- If necessary, migrate identity and access data from legacy systems to the new IAM solutions.
6. Test and Validate
- Conduct thorough testing to ensure that your IAM framework is effective and that there are no security vulnerabilities.
- Perform User Acceptance Testing with end-users to validate the user experience.
- Conduct penetration testing to identify and address security weaknesses.
7. Training and Change Management
- Train your end-users on how to use the new IAM system and follow best practices, and your IT staff and admins on how to manage and maintain the IAM framework.
- Implement a change management plan to ensure the new IAM framework can be properly adopted by everyone in your organization.
8. Monitor and Maintain
- Set up continuous monitoring and conduct audits to track and review access activities, detect anomalies, and to ensure your new policies are compliant.
- Periodically update IAM policies and procedures to address new security threats and organizational changes.
9. Review and Improve
- Regularly review and refine your IAM framework to validate that it remains effective and aligned with organizational goals.
Implementing IAM
With many modern IAM solutions, implementation is straightforward. In particular, cloud-based IAM solutions can be quick and easy to deploy. Nevertheless, engaging with IAM professionals can pay dividends. Their specialized knowledge and experience can help design and implement a robust IAM framework tailored to an organization’s specific needs while ensuring that best practices are followed and vulnerabilities are addressed. Plus, they can provide ongoing support, regular audits, and updated threat information.
Conclusion
A solid identity and access management framework is essential to any modern cybersecurity and cyber resilience strategy. IAM equips organizations to effectively manage user identities and control access to resources, reducing the risk of data breaches, downtime, and compliance penalties. Look for modern IAM solutions that offer capabilities like multifactor authentication, single sign-on, identity threat detection and response, and just-in-time privileged access.
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