For any business to run effectively, its employees, suppliers, contractors, and partners need to easily access relevant resources via a variety of applications. But depending on the size of your entity, keeping tabs on who logged in where and accessed what information can be a tall order for the IT department.
As you know, hacking, phishing, and several other types of cyber-attacks pose a threat to your sensitive business information. Thankfully, technology is on your side. By using an Identity and Access Management System (IAM), your business can be on top of any security breaches while streamlining workloads and improving overall efficiency.
But what is an Identity and Access Management System? Simply put, IAM is a framework of processes and policies used to effectively regulate user access in an organization. You probably want to know more, so let’s unpack the concept further and explain why any business would need such a framework.
For IAM solutions, Squareball has a highly trusted and certified partnership with Okta.
Generally, the concept of Identity and Access Management Systems revolves around two vital aspects—user and access. As you know, a business is made up of a framework of different users such as employees, suppliers, and customers.
Each user requires specific data from your organizational database to effectively fulfill their roles. While this sounds simple enough in theory, the goal is to ensure that people access only the information or resources they have permission to see, use, or change.
Crossing all the t’s and dotting the i’s to accomplish this could put immense pressure on your IT department. But, thanks to the Identity and Access Management System, the process of identifying, authenticating, and authorizing users is super streamlined.
The system is in charge of creating, managing, modifying, and deleting access privileges. In other words, IAM is responsible for capturing and recording user log-in information and orchestrating the removal of access privileges when necessary.
To do this, the Identity and Management system audits each user’s login and access history. The result is that access privileges are kept up-to-date all the time.
The Identity and Access Management System goes far beyond the creation of strong and secure passwords. Additional digital authentication in the form of single sign-on and multi-factor authentication is paramount for reinforced security.
The benefits of having such a system in a place far outweigh the drawbacks of not having it. Probably the first and most important reason to consider an IAM solution is to protect your organization from security and data breaches. Information is power but can be a major weapon of destruction if it falls into the wrong hands.
Identity and Access Management Systems prohibit unauthorized parties from accessing confidential information that they shouldn’t be viewing. Also, customers, suppliers, and other parties can access relevant information without compromising data protocols.
While Identity and Access Management is predominantly sought for the security aspect, its benefits can be enjoyed across other areas of your business. Identity and Access Management improves the user experience for all parties involved.
Users no longer need several passwords to access different applications, which can be daunting. That’s because IAM allows your IT department to create a unique digital identity for each user to access different functions based on their role.
With an optimized user experience, your IT help desk load is significantly reduced. That means they can now focus on more important, high-priority tasks than attending to password resets.
In the same vein, users no longer need to spend time trying to recall passwords or blowing up the IT helpdesk phone. Workers can also focus on more productive tasks. Ultimately, it's a win-win for the entire company.
Running a business certainly isn’t child’s play. Most business owners try to make sure that everything runs smoothly all the time. If that’s your goal, you won't be doing your business any favors by leaving your access and user control systems to chance.
To ensure that the necessary stakeholders, such as employees, suppliers, or contractors, access the relevant information, you should consider IAM. An Identity and Access Management System ensures effective and efficient control of who accesses what information in your organization.
With this system, users can only access the critical information they are entitled to, depending on their role in the organization, and nothing more. After accessing the data, IAM systems further control whether the user can only view or can both view and change the information.
The overall result is an optimized user experience across all company applications, increased productivity, and enhanced security.
For further reading, check out our other articles like The Definition of Identity, Credential, and Access Management and How Does Okta Work With Active Directory?