Growing technology advancements are bringing along potential cybersecurity threats, placing IT security on top of everything.
These threats are fast emerging with the changing trends, posing serious challenges to organizational data and system safety.
Here is where Identity and Access Management (IAM) comes into the picture, offering the ‘first line of defense’ from potential threats.
How IAM Helps?
Ensuring the right access to the right individual at the right time in the proper context of the enterprise is the sole idea of the Identity and Access Management (IAM) services.
Be it for external parties like end-users or business partners or internal parties like internal staff or contractors, IAM services offer a dedicated digital entity, as a combination of role and privilege for every individual user.
Three most common IAM methods are:
- Single sign-on, where there will be unique sign-on credentials for access for any system, network, or service.
- Multi-factor authentication involves two or more forms of login credentials for information access, in combinations of password and a biometric tool, biometric and pin, and password and call/text-based authentication.
- Privileged Access Management (PAM), where user access is bound to a set of privileges. This is considered the most secure way, with more visibility, monitoring, and access control.
In these most common ways, IAM services offer high-level security to organizations’ systems and data.
Here, we will see nine reasons that strongly advocate for considering IAM services:
1) Security Management
A data breach incident is the most common concern to every organization today, irrespective of size and market position. One of the 2019 Data Breach Investigation reports mentions that more than 40 percent of such incidents involved small businesses. Ignoring cybersecurity over other business priorities is cited as the top reason. Here is where you need robust IAM services to secure your organization from internal and external threats.
IAM services ensure overall security by providing necessary controls in place.
2) Identity Management
The same report found ‘internal threat actors’ as the key reason behind 34 percent of breach incidents. A large portion of data breaches, caused by internal threats, involves privilege misuse and manual errors.
Having an IAM system in place helps you gain full access control and offer access privileges only to the right person under the right context. This protects from external threat actors in case your internal member falls prey to a threat attempt.
3) Defining Access
Defining access is one crucial aspect that can lead to potential losses if dealt with improperly. As per the report findings, every employee had access to 17 million files and 1.2 million folders, with the majority of them enjoying access to sensitive files. This is purely tied to how the organization defines access among its teams.
Any employee might not require access to everything around and be limited to his/her core functioning.
Mishandling this act of defining access can cause many troubles pertaining to information security in the future. IAM services ensure the right segregation of tasks and align employees and access to them strategically.
4) Cost Savings
If you think spending on cybersecurity is expensive, then consider how much a data breach incident can cost your organization. The average cost of a data breach can be around USD 3.92 million, shows a renowned Cost of Data Breach report. So, implementing IAM system and tools can save such unnecessary costs, alongside addressing your cybersecurity needs.
5) Customer Satisfaction
One of the leading data breach surveys confirms that 83 percent of US customers prefer staying away from businesses after a breach incident, and more than 20 percent don’t want to come back ever. So, ensuring data security is key to gaining user trust and retaining customers.
An IAM system provides the user data is safe and secure across all channels by offering different layers of security across multiple platforms.
6) User Experience
Options like single-factor authentication offer ease in access across multiple channels, mainly social media logins. As users find numerous ways to share their content, enhanced experience and security assurance are advantageous.
Single-factor authentication helps users login to multiple platforms and keeps their job of content sharing uninterrupted from every-time logouts.
ALSO READ: Cybersecurity Compliance Advisory Services in the US
7) Business Performance
Attracting more customers through enhanced user experience and enhanced security is the best way to drive business performance. Thinking how IAM helps here? By alleviating your security concerns, IAM services and solutions help you focus on other aspects of business growth and pressing matters.
Defining access to employees in a large enterprise setup is no more cumbersome with IAM services, which can ensure login for hundreds of employees with ease in a secure environment. Moreover, a robust IAM system allows your IT teams to explore other focus areas.
ALSO READ: Why Companies Need Identity and Access Management?
8) Improved Mobility
The COVID-19 crisis gave rise to the remote working culture, which is now a new normal for most companies. But ensuring security from threat actors is crucial as employees operate on different networks outside the organizational purview. So, it’s essential to ensure security in mobile operations for employee safety and corporate data against internal and external threats.
9) Automatic Deprovisioning
Unused or abandoned accounts lay down the path for intruders to gain unauthorized access. IAM tools take a strategic approach by automatically de-provisioning unused accounts, thus avoiding the possibility of such attacks. This may not require the attention of your IT teams.
ALSO READ – Infographic: Reasons To Consider Identity and Access Management Services
In Conclusion
Many other reasons strongly recommend IAM services for securing your systems and data. Looking for support?