There’s no doubting the significant advantages of migrating to the cloud. Moving an application to cloud servers can enhance performance, security, flexibility, scalability and cost effective-ness in addition to reliability and uptime, says Thomas Muller-Martin, Global Partner Lead, Omada.
Yet the migrating process is incredibly difficult and complex. As the cloud shift has continued, organizations are continuing to grapple with issues related to cloud security. According to Gartner, 75 per cent of cloud security failures this year will stem from inadequate management of identities, access and privileges – up from 50pc in 2020.
This is a significant problem. And if the status quo remains, then as identities proliferate, the cloud challenge will just get hazier. Last year, 57pc of organizations around the world moved their operations to the cloud. The magnitude of this data point underscores the critical need to get identity under control.
Identity management challenges
Cloud-based solutions need to stay compliant while enabling secure communication within the company as well as with customers and partners. They must keep security and compliance front and centre, while undergirding the rapid adoption of new digital services. While operating in a complex, growing and dynamically changing environment, the solutions must preserve the brand and its intellectual property. As identity-based attacks continue to proliferate, proper identity management must be a cornerstone of security strategy.
The overall landscape for identity management has grown more challenging over time. People aren’t staying in jobs or roles as long as they may have in the past. New tools and solutions are being added all the time. As technology continues to evolve, it contributes to an expanded number of identities. And the prospect of insider threats is always looming; whether intention-al or not, an employee with too much access has the potential to share sensitive information.
To remain secure and comply with regulations, organizations need complete visibility into who is accessing their apps, data and infrastructure; when and why they need access; and what they do when they have this access. These are the essential components of an Identity and Access Management (IAM) strategy and are the heart of identity governance.
And while this isn’t a new phenomenon, cloud and SaaS have changed the game and made this even more important than before. Most organizations fundamentally understand this, but they’re still struggling to get it right.
Starting with zero trust
Where does the process of transformation start? Part of having strong control over identities and who is accessing what, when and from where is the concept of zero trust. It’s a security concept model that keeps a tight rein on access controls based on the idea that everyone should be treated with suspicion, including those who are already inside the network perimeter. As a result, it’s a strategy that is designed to “deny” and that regards everybody and every-thing as a threat. The safe access paradigm switches from a starting position of “trust but veri-fy” to trusting nothing and always verifying.
While awareness of the importance of zero trust continues to climb – it’s even being mandated at the federal level in the U.S.– that doesn’t mean implementing it is always easy. For smaller organizations, in particular, this is a model that is sometimes easier said than done.
How IGA improves cloud security
As noted earlier, visibility is key. An IGA solution enables a business’s IT department to manage and regulate all user access permissions within a hybrid IT environment. Aspects that IGA pro-cesses regulate include:
●conducting certifications and evaluations of access across all on-prem and cloud-based applications.
●a structured method for onboarding applications.
●auditing and compliance reporting to guarantee ongoing risk management.
●controlling access to resources across a company’s hybrid IT systems (including apps running on-premises and in the cloud).
●new hire onboarding and off-boarding departing employees.
●handling access assignment policies and provisioning, and granularly controlling application access in accordance with corporate regulations.
Effective processing of these aspects enables businesses to assure compliance, lower costs and reduce the danger of insider and hacker-driven data theft.
Clearing the air with IGA
Identity management solutions are allowing organizations to stay in the driver’s seat of their digital journey. They provide governed processes, audit access and rule-, role- and policy-based access. They also enforce the “need to know” principle. Such tools connect faster to many more target systems and are able to deal with higher numbers of employees, suppliers and contractors.
Staying in control over time will become crucial for organizations that are on a cloud journey. Those that try to adopt the cloud without tool support will find themselves in a position that is hard to maintain, expensive to operate and impossible to stay in control of. Understanding identity challenges – both general and organization-specific – using an IGA solution with zero trust at the core will remove the haze of confusion and create a strong foundation for identity management and greater cloud security.
