As per a survey by Forrester Research (Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper, February 2017), in the last 4 years, out of every three organizations, two have had an average of at least 5 breaches. There are nearly 6 billion data records that were stolen and lost in the past 10 years. According to www.breachlevelindex.com, an average of 165,000 records are compromised every hour. According to this article published on www.csoonline.com, global cybercrime related damage is expected to exceed US$ 6 trillion annually by the year 2021.
How can IAM help protect data?
- Identification: Users make their claim on their identity by entering a username and verify through an authentication process
- Authentication: Authentication may be a password or may rely on advanced technologies, such as biometric and token-based authentication
- Authorization: The IAM system must then verify the user’s authorization to perform the requested activity and also ensure that users perform actions only within their scope of authority
Together, these three processes combine to ensure that specified users have the access they need to do their jobs, while unauthorized users are kept away from sensitive resources and information. Effective IAM solutions help enterprises facilitate secure, efficient access to technology resources across these diverse systems.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) is the information security discipline that allows users access to appropriate technology resources, at the right time. It incorporates three major concepts:
According to this article on BizTech magazine, improved data security is one of the three main reasons to deploy an IAM solution.
The article highlights the fact that consolidating authentication and authorization functionality on a single platform provides IT professionals with a consistent method for managing user access. And when a user leaves an organization, IT administrators may revoke their access in the centralized IAM solution with the confidence that this revocation will immediately take effect across all of the technology platforms integrated with that IAM platform.
So implement an identity and access management solution at your organization to take a major step towards improved data security.
