In recent years, the massive move to the cloud resulted in more enterprises adopting multi-cloud and hybrid infrastructures. This situation creates challenges in identity management such as fragmentation and silos. Identity orchestration is a new technology that comes to solve these challenges. But what is identity orchestration? In this post, we’ll give you a primer on this new technology and how it solves identity management challenges.
First, let’s talk about identity management
Identity and access management (IAM) is a software solution that helps organizations verify the identity of users. It helps control who is accessing and using data0, applications, and resources. An IAM system ensures the right users access the tools they need for their tasks and enables managing a variety of identities, including software entities and devices.
How does an IAM system work?
Identity management systems verify and authenticate the identity of any entity or user wanting to access a resource or application. Typically, IAM systems will use technologies such as multi-factor authentication, role-based access, and single sign-on.
Identity and access management solutions usually perform two main tasks:
- Credentials authentication against a database. IAM cloud identity tools are more secure than username and password solutions.
- User authorization at only the necessary level of access. IAM solutions enable organizations to restrict access to their resources according to the user role and permissions.
Other functions of IAM systems include:
- Managing user identities: IAM systems are usually the only directory that creates, edits and deletes users. The systems also create new identities.
- Assign permissions and access levels: IAM systems enable the IT department to provision access levels and permissions to users according to their role, department, or other criteria.
- Reporting: IAM tools usually generate reports of users’ activities (login times, type of authentication, what systems were accessed).
- Single sign-on: this feature enables users to access resources with one set of login credentials instead of multiple passwords.
Challenges of traditional IAM
These days, enterprise IT departments face the challenge of providing access to data and resources while preventing unauthorized access to sensitive corporate data. Some of the common challenges of traditional identity and access management include:
Mobile identity management: Companies with a distributed workforce have the additional challenge of having to manage identities on multiple devices, including mobile. One of such challenges is to ensure only authorized users can access the devices. Devices may be lost or stolen. Therefore, it is important that the identity and access management system has behavioral analytics capability.
Multi-cloud: Many organizations moving to the cloud try to prevent vendor lock-in by adopting multiple cloud services. However, each cloud comes with its own identity policies model. Hence, managing identities for multiple clouds can be increasingly complex.
Increased risk from SSO: While single sign-on is very convenient, there is always the risk of an attacker getting access to the entire system via a single compromised endpoint.
What is Identity Orchestration?
Identity orchestration solutions come to solve these challenges by operating a logical layer that connects multiple identity systems and synchronizes policies and configurations. This logical layer ensures consistent identity and user access policies across distributed identity systems and locations, on-premises and in the cloud.
How Identity Orchestration solves IAM challenges
The identity orchestration platform layer helps applications to integrate with identity systems without configuration changes. So, these solutions solve common identity access management issues.
- An identity orchestration platform gives authorized users access to applications by using a distributed identity model. That means the identity is consistent across environments.
- Contrarily to the single sign-on method, identity orchestration is compatible with the principle of least privilege. The overlay standardizes user policies in multiple environments allowing the organization to implement security policies such as zero-trust and the principle of least privilege.
- An identity orchestration platform helps organizations migrate apps and identities without needing to rewrite or modernize applications.
What to consider when choosing an Identity Orchestration solution
Choosing the right orchestration platform for your organization helps provide a seamless customer experience and security. A good orchestration platform coordinates several aspects of the business process. It creates a personalized experience while keeping security tight.
Identity orchestration enables frictionless login and registration, by using several methods to verify users. It automates security features such as IP address checks, alerting about potential identity fraud. Look for a solution that simplifies bringing your own identity (BYOI) and clears users ahead of time.
Start Orchestrating Now
The number of users and applications will only grow in the next few years. So, the sooner you implement an identity orchestration solution, the better. Implementing an identity orchestration platform simplifies migrating identities to the cloud and provides ID proofing and authentication without the need for multiple passwords, keeping data and resources secure. The automation capabilities ensure improved business processes, saving time and costs. Organizations need to ensure advanced authentication and authorization controls to prevent cyberattacks and fraud.