From remote employees working on personal devices to marketing consultants logging on to shared social media accounts to customers authenticating using SaaS applications, the sensitive assets of an organization can be accessed at any given moment without crossing traditional network boundaries.
This is why the ability of access management tools to map access between individuals’ identities and protected resources, and to provide real-time access control over these connections, is critical to implementing a strong enterprise network security policy. However, as the range of resources that users need to access continues to change and new drivers influence business strategies, the capabilities of access management solutions continue to grow, increasingly overlapping and merging with neighboring security domains.
So what is most important now when evaluating access management tools? If you poll stakeholders across the organization, you might get a variety of answers, as most access management initiatives are initiated by a single functional owner with specific goals and tactics or short-term needs. While there are different opinions, most of the relevant investment drivers fall into four broad categories:
- Defense against
- Improve operational efficiency
- Promoting digital business
- Meet audit requirements and compliance
Take the rapid shift to working remotely. IT security teams must provide secure remote access for employees to fend off the rising tide of CYBER attacks related to COVID-19. This requirement results in a disproportionate investment in access management solutions that protect remote workers but may limit the widespread use of these solutions in other use cases. On top of that, the passive reliance on AD hoc solutions has led to a whole host of disparate access management tools that only serve specific needs and create potential security vulnerabilities in the digital identity environment of the entire organization.
Four trends for the future of access management
1. Tactical expansion of access management tools led to serious security consistency challenges and a subsequent push towards unified access platforms to consolidate control. Most of these tools already include multi-factor authentication (MFA), identity lifecycle management, and basic access management functions, such as access requests with approval workflow and directory synchronization. However, the most effective platforms extend their reach by taking a privilege-centric approach to protecting identity and embedding powerful privilege-access management controls. Examples include authentication and authentication of users for privileged account access, session isolation and endpoint permission control through single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) of AM tools. This convergence of privileged access management and access management adds many benefits, such as risk reduction, and creates a new source of context-adaptive access control.
2. The second trend that will bring us – AI-based identity management and adaptive authentication. Corporate access requirements have changed radically. At the same time, the authentication process has not kept pace, as evidenced by the prevalence of password-based controls. More than 60 percent of enterprises experience security breaches every year, and about 40 percent of these are caused by user password leaks. Traditional high-friction cryptographic processes are often ineffective because they rely on the end user remembering complex passwords that are constantly changing. When users are faced with powerful authentication methods, they often skip the security process to perform job tasks more easily.
Adaptive access management, powered by artificial intelligence, offers a compelling alternative. These solutions can operate without human intervention, gathering and analyzing intelligence about user behavior, such as visualizing and contexalizing risks, discovering threat patterns, and dynamically adjusting the authentication process and access control. For example, organizations can create policies to prevent high-risk users from starting applications with customer data without using high-security MFA factors such as physical tokens or fingerprint readers to verify their identity. Meanwhile, low-risk users accessing low-risk applications can skip secondary authentication. This approach reduces the friction and complexity often associated with “always-on” MFA controls.
3. Expectations for great digital experiences have never been higher. Advances in Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) are helping businesses meet these needs by providing easier and more secure customer access to their websites and applications.
Traditionally, customer authentication is a point-in-time decision based on the initial credentials provided by the user. If a customer’s device or credentials are compromised, unauthorized access may result. Modern CIAM solutions utilize user behavior analysis (similar to that described above), such as measuring navigation activities against established baselines, to accurately verify customer identity. Advanced CIAM features such as profile management, customer consent management and master data management are supported throughout the digital customer journey.
4. The cloud competition is driving the demand for scalable “AS-A-service” security solutions, and access management is no exception. Organizations are adopting access management provided by SaaS to simplify deployment and usage, provide stronger end-to-end security, and realize a range of operational advantages. Organizations that include traditional or non-standard applications with a wide mix of environments are also changing, thanks to services such as application gateways that ensure remote access to internal applications and allow users to access all required applications with a single SSO click.
As the IT environment evolves, cyber criminals increasingly target identity, and more organizations adopt a “zero trust” mindset, security, risk, and identity leaders must consider all four trends when evaluating new access management tools and approaches.
Article source: www.cyberark.com/resources/b…
About us
“Longgui Technology” is a focus on low code enabling enterprise level information service providers. The core founder team came from green Alliance Security, Red Hat open source operating system, well-known game playing crab technology, well-known open source community and other experts jointly founded.
“Longgui Technology” is committed to enabling every enterprise in China to have their own automated office operating system, to help enterprises or governments embrace Cloud Native First strategy, to help customers build a modern IT infrastructure centered on “identity and application”! So as to realize “digital transformation” and “industrial production of software industry”!
Main products: ArkOS ARK operating system: an enterprise-level office automation operating system, combined with self-developed low code application development platform, to build an industrial ecosystem, focusing on creating an integrated full-stack cloud native platform for all kinds of enterprises and organizations. System built-in applications include: ArkID unified identity authentication, ArkIDE, ArkPlatform, App Store and other products. Up to now, the company has obtained 15 software Copyrights, 2 invention patents, and in November 2020, Beijing Haidian District Zhongguancun National high-tech enterprise certification.
Related links:
Website: www.longguikeji.com/
Documents: docs.arkid.longguikeji.com/
Open source code warehouse address:
github.com/longguikeji
gitee.com/longguikeji
Article history
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- Enterprise single sign-on – foundation of information system construction
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- The dragon to science and technology | some speculation about the future
- The dragon is the future of science and technology | enterprise office automation
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