How do you FEEL about Identity Access Management?

Seems like a strange question for a hardened and pragmatic cybersecurity practice, right? But it’s actually quite necessary to the ongoing and rapid evolution of Identity Access Management (IAM). We are at the forefront of an IAM revolution. IAM has always striven for better automation and the possibility of how machines could make more informed decisions due to the necessity, ubiquity, and potentially overwhelming nature of the IAM presence in an organization. This can quickly become a “whack-a-mole” exercise as humans manually review and make decisions that can have rippling effects within their infrastructure. Artificial Intelligence (AI), previously the stuff of science fiction, with a rote implementation that has yet to fulfill the prophecy of Isaac Asimov is now seeing arguably great strides with the fervor over facets like ChatGPT and its growing list of possibilities. But still, automation, machine learning, and even AI must be curated. Nowhere is this more true and intense than in cybersecurity. At some point and typically many points, a human must review, ensure, check, double check, talk to another human(s) to validate, and then perform the whole process over again at various points in the life cycle. We always try to lessen this need, but it never fully goes away. The real challenge though, is perception; the blurry ideals and expectations that inherently exist in human nature and understanding. And it’s not human fault, much like the shortcomings of AI are not its fault. Information output is only as good as information input. You don’t know what you don’t know. For humans, erroneous and/or incomplete information creates extraneous cognitive load, doubt, and ultimately anxiety. That’s a recipe for disaster in an IAM environment. So how do we solve it in the now and not wait upon the robot dreams of some future state?

Identity is the New Network Perimeter

Gone are the days when the castle wall perimeter approach could protect your corporate network. The distributed nature of modern enterprise systems and the lack of an obvious physical boundary calls for a better solution – where identity is the new gatekeeper.

5 Things to Look for in an Identity Governance Solution

Identity governance solutions help businesses efficiently manage user access to applications and other network resources over the lifecycle of each user identity. Granting access and maintaining visibility over that access and ensuring compliance with internal and external policies is a full-time job. Too much reliance on manual identity governance is expensive, inefficient, and risky. 

How IAM Empowers a Digital Transformation Strategy

Whether to deliver a better customer experience or to improve productivity, digital transformation integrates technology into all areas of the business to help achieve these types of goals. This article describes how a dedicated, modern IAM solution empowers a successful digital transformation strategy. 

5 Things to Look for in an Identity Governance Solution

Identity governance solutions help businesses efficiently manage user access to applications and other network resources over the lifecycle of each user identity. Granting access and maintaining visibility over that access and ensuring compliance with internal and external policies is a full-time job. Too much reliance on manual identity governance is expensive, inefficient, and risky. 

Using IAM to Eliminate Barriers to Business Productivity

Within a complex modern corporate network, properly managing user identities is both a productivity challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is to meet that core security aim of securely managing user access while balancing that with providing the right people with the right access at the times they need it. This article describes the central role a robust identity and access management strategy and solution plays in balancing security with productivity. 

Identity Attack Vectors (Methods and Tactics)

Identity attack vectors extend the surface area for cyber attacks beyond the open ports, database vulnerabilities, and insecure protocols that malicious intruders often seek to exploit. The purpose of identity attacks is to compromise identities on a network and impersonate that identity for a nefarious purpose. This article describes identity attack vectors by focusing on the methods and tactics used to take over compromised identities on a corporate network. 

Analyzing the Colonial Pipeline Cyber Attack from An Identity Management Perspective

Identity as the New Network Perimeter

Whether you’re talking about devices or users, identity is the common factor that enables or weakens an organization’s information security posture. Proper identity and access management:

1. provides users and devices with the right level of access matching their role and responsibility,
2. supports and provides statistical analysis of processes that include authorization and certification to determine compliance
3. highlight IAM process inefficiencies and,  
4. help you discover and remove accounts that are no longer in use or are no longer needed for a job function.

This article describes how identity functions as the new network perimeter within the modern corporate network infrastructure.