The IAM landscape in today’s business world is becoming more complex due to an increase in applications, increased user categorization, and disconnected infrastructure that groups with thousands of applications, people, and devices. It also wants reform to address evolving security concerns and unique challenges that affect users and administrators in diverse situations. An inefficient IAM solution could result in time-consuming identity life cycle management, manual access control that promotes human errors and excessive access, problems with data security, financial losses because of security breaches, and much more.
It is no surprise that modern organizations are searching for converged Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions that can meet the challenges of today’s increased need for access administration efficiency while lowering security risk. With the right solution in hand, businesses can increase operational efficiency, streamline regulatory compliance, enhance employee satisfaction, save costs, and implement a robust security posture.
For the organizations to choose the appropriate IAM solution, first it needs to be aware of the main IAM challenges in controlling enterprise-wide accesses with greater visibility across all platforms using the centralized system approach. Some of the major challenges faced by modern organizations are listed below
Getting your employees started on the right foot on Day 1 is quite challenging and reduces productivity. The lack of information on what system and access permission are priorities for business productivity and continuity becomes a big question mark. As a result, an organization must endure the cost of lost productivity until the employees have their birthright roles and access as a starting point to perform their job roles. The whole point of digital transformation and integration is to be more productive. When a user can’t log in, her valuable time is lost contacting a help desk or their managers. To add, it results in poor employee experience and now productivity comes to a screeching halt.
As organizations accelerate their journey to digital transformation in the cloud-first world and operate in a hybrid IT environment, there is a rise in cloud-based app usage across departments and job functions. As per a McAfee study, almost 93% of organizations are currently using cloud services. In such a scenario, it is crucial to leverage smarter access control using an automated, cloud-based integrated solution that provides the capabilities of Access Management, Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), and Privileged Access Management (PAM). These IAM solutions provide support for modern applications and offer effective access control to cloud environment endpoints.
In the absence of an automated IAM system, accesses are required to be manually provisioned and deprovisioned by IT administrators which leads to the risk of human error, excessive access rights, and poor access visibility. With longer provisioning and approval cycles, user productivity reduces and silos get created. On the other hand, failing to withdraw the access privileges of employees who have left the organization or been moved to different divisions may have detrimental effects on the organization’s security and make critical business applications more vulnerable to security threats. This method of managing user identities and access is ineffective and unsustainable, particularly for large organizations. Not to mention, it leads to human intervention and loss of cost, time, and effort.
Owing to the growth of cloud infrastructure and Software as a Service (SaaS), users now have access to multiple applications and can log in from any device, anytime, anywhere. However, as distributed apps or directories scale up, user identity and access management become more challenging with increased downtime and latency. Due to this, users struggle with password management without an easy means to access these resources. When an employee spends an increasing amount of time handling the lists of passwords, user productivity decreases significantly while also leading to password fatigue. Additionally, any support tickets are directed to IT admins, thereby overburdening the IT teams.
Security breaches have always existed in the IAM landscape, but they have become massive in the new world of work. As a result of employees being dispersed across a nation or perhaps the globe, sustaining a consistent user experience for employees without compromising security is a cumbersome task for IT teams to handle. With infrastructure, services, and data migrating to the cloud, inefficient IAM solutions that lack native security characteristics are vulnerable to data theft and security breaches. As per a data breach study, the average total cost of a data breach comes out to be $3.62M.
With evolving cloud adoption and digitalization, it is essential to concentrate on making compliance an inseparable part of access management. Hence, integrated solutions that take care of IGA in addition to access management are preferred in hybrid IT environments that works on an always-connected concept. To ensure robust security posture and audit readiness, organizations need to manage real-time, centralized reporting over a unified platform. Organizations must have clear visibility of who has access to what and why irrespective of the location of users or resources. In the absence of compliance procedures and policies, organizations may end up paying heavy fines and penalties or even face a likelihood of reputation danger or getting regulated out of business.
With the increased importance and count of digital interactions, a poor user experience could be a barrier to creating a secure digital organization. The complexity of manual or home-grown processes or the incapability of IAM solutions to meet modern customer needs further aggravates user disappointment and ruins user experience. While it plays a major role for streamline access management, what needs to be taken care of is that not everyone gets access. The process must prioritize company policies, risk management policies, and other concepts like Privileged Access Management.
Take the next step!
The Identity and Access Management challenges if not attended to in time can lead to serious security breaches. While many organizations understand the importance of a robust IAM solution, a few are still on the fence because of the expense and difficulty of deployment. However, the imperative is clear: Now is the time to leverage a cloud-based, integrated IAM solution that can create and enforce an organization-wide secure identity and access management approach. This is especially important when businesses weigh the cost of a potential security breach or analyze the inefficiencies involved in the manual provisioning and deprovisioning of access to corporate resources.
Skyrocket your Access Management with AccessFlow!
AccessFlow is an automated, centralized, and compliant Enterprise Access Management and Governance solution built on the robust ServiceNow® Now platform. It is a SOC 1 Type 1 Certified solution and provides customers with added trust and compliance benefits.
Bringing your access management to life, AccessFlow ensures that the right users in an organization have the right access to the right resources, and for the right duration. AccessFlow provides a possibility to automate the end-to-end digital identity lifecycle and unify the access administration approach across entities – be it applications, network folders, or more granular process-driven roles. It streamlines operations, removes a lot of workload pressure from IT or IAM, and places it in the hands of the line of business.
Apt for the modern workforce and the new world of work – AccessFlow empowers organizations to become audit-ready while providing a unified interface to request, track and execute access management operations across the user lifecycle. It leverages various automated infrastructure and cloud management functions that do not require any physical presence in offices or data centers.
AccessFlow is an easy-to-use, converged IGA, Access Management, and PAM solution that provides Identity and Access Management on the go!
To kickstart your access management journey, request an AccessFlow demo today at information@alcortech.com
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