Challenges Of Using Identity And Access Management Solutions.

Identity and access management (IAM) is the set of policies, frameworks, and technologies that enterprises are currently used to manage digital identities and accesses. The main purpose of the IAM solution is to provide the right access to the right user at the right time. It encompasses the creation and management of singular digital identities, provisioning and de-provisioning of rights & privileges, and authentication and authorization of identities to access enterprise resources to perform tasks.

There are 3 key attributes in any identity and access management solution:

1. User profile management
2. Authentication
3. Authorization

User profile management: It includes creation, modification, management, and deletion of users and user accesses. It serves to create a singular digital identity for a user. It is used to manage the entire life-cycle of the user, from start (provisioning) till the end (de-provisioning). User profile management uses role and privileges policies in order to grant permissions to various resources and tools within the enterprise network.

Authentication: It is the validation of an identity that requests access to a resource in a network. It is the verification of the user through login credentials or technologies such as two-factor authentication (2FA), multi-factor authentication (MFA), one time pins (OTPs), etc. depending on security protocols.

Authorization: It determines the extent and type of rights/privileges of identity, once the user is authenticated. It restricts access of the user only to its requirement/role for that specific session.

Undoubtedly, IAM has numerous benefits but there are some challenges of using this amazing solution. Here we are going to discuss all these challenges with the corresponding solution. Let’s dive into it.

Distributed workforce and applications

Organizations are adopting the work from home, or remote work policy nowadays. With this, the workforce is spread across vast geographical locations. Apart from this, with the exponential growth of the cloud-based and SaaS models, users now log in to critical business applications that are diverse and distributed. A distributed workforce using distributed applications certainly improves productivity but can be daunting to IT administrators.

Solution: A centrally managed identity and access management solution that offers visibility and control of the distributed workforce and distributed applications.

Productive provisioning

IT staff needs to provide access manually in the absence of a centralized IAM solution. This takes up time and decreases productivity. Manual provisioning and de-provisioning of user access are prone to error and oversights.

Solution: A robust identity and access management solution that automates provisioning and de-provisioning of user access.

Password Problems

With an increasing number of applications, users need to remember a huge list of passwords, making productivity a thing of the past and user frustration at the peak of an eruption. When users forget their passwords, they look out to IT staff for help, thus repeatedly draining IT resources when they could be directed at something more productive.

Solution: An identity and access management solution that federates user identity by offering SSO capability.

Regulatory Compliance

Compliance and corporate governance are becoming a source of concern for organizations as most clients refuse to be associated with them in the absence of such compliance and audits. It is hence a challenge to maintain logs of which user has accessed what at which time.

Solution: An identity and access management solution that supports compliance, automates audit log reporting, and generates comprehensive reports.

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