5 Reasons Why IAM is Important: Things You Need to Know

Published 2/24/22, 9:00am

Today, the process of identity and access management (IAM) is central to the way an organization conducts business. Successfully managing IAM can help organizations improve operations, comply with regulations, and reduce operating costs. Achieving the necessary equilibrium between access, security, compliance, and low-cost/high-output operations means understanding the key components of IAM and how to integrate IAM successfully into the enterprise.

The world of identity and access is constantly dissolving and reforming. Perimeters have been replaced with “de-perimeterization;” credentials are going passwordless, and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are replacing traditional role-based access management. Never has there been a time when the concept of identity and access management required more flexibility and forethought.

So, why is IAM important for businesses that are ready to expand and modernize? To answer that question, let’s dive into the five biggest things that make a robust IAM program indispensable to security.

#1—IAM isn’t just one tool, policy, or process.

IAM is an all-encompassing term used to describe a variety of processes, policies, technologies, and strategies associated with identifying which users should be granted access to corporate assets (identity management) and the approach to managing the level and circumstances of access for those users (access management). IAM encompasses three primary areas: Identity Governance and Administration, Access Management, and Privileged Access Management.

#2—IAM is central to pretty much everything in cybersecurity.

Identity and access management touches every aspect of security from network infrastructure and risk management to data privacy and loss prevention. As mentioned above, IAM isn’t a single product or solution; it’s a fundamental set of policies and standards that are enforced to achieve a set of key business objectives, including reducing operational costs, reducing risk to information assets, and improving user experience and productivity.

#3—Identity or “user” can be defined in multiple ways.

Within the context of computing and security operations, the definition of ‘identity’ is getting blurrier. No longer limited to just internal employees and a handful of large-scale servers, today ‘identity’ includes anything that can connect to and communicate with a digital device, including dispersed staff, contractors, and customers, widely distributed cloud systems, robotics, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, software and applications, external devices (e.g., cameras), and ‘smart’ tools such as tablets and phones.

#4—Identity is the new perimeter.

Today, identity is the new perimeter having evolved to address key business challenges central to conducting business in the digital world. Applications and data no longer reside in on-premise data centers with controlled physical and digital access. Physical buildings and network perimeters have been replaced by remote work and the cloud. The concept of “perimeter” can no longer be defined by physical infrastructure. Instead, perimeter must be expressed by who or what has access to the systems, data, or applications.

#5—The former IAM “trust but verify” model has shifted to “never trust, always verify.”

The modern concept of never trust, always verify (also called “zero trust”) is a set of guiding principles and security approaches for workflow, system design, and security operations that define security based on users, assets, resources, and computing activities. Zero trust replaces the more traditional approach of “trust but verify,” which defined security based on static, network-based perimeters. A zero-trust model grants no implicit trust to users, accounts, other systems, or assets based solely on the user being a ‘trusted source’ or their location (physical, network, or cloud). 

The older concept of ‘trust but verify’ was built on the idea of physical perimeters and supported by virtual private networks (VPN) for remote access and federation standards for the authentication and access management of partners and service providers. This was a time when organizations could rely on the fact that the people accessing critical information assets were who they were supposed to be and located in one place. In recent years, though, the “trust but verify” model has fallen short and no longer supports a widely dispersed workforce operating within cloud environments.

In a zero-trust model, anything or anyone inside or outside network perimeters is automatically assumed to be untrustworthy, and therefore must be verified, with access and activities continually evaluated before authorization is granted to devices, systems, networks, data, or applications.

Modern IAM is crucial to security

With cybercrime growing exponentially, security is only as good as your weakest link—and often that weakest link is associated with the users that have access to your network. Those users could be cloud systems or devices such as smartphones, internal staff that have inappropriate access to systems, disgruntled employees intent on doing damage to your organization, vendors that require access to help support one or more of your systems or external threat actors intent on breaching your network to infiltrate or steal mission-critical data.

Defining your digital identity is central to conducting business; dependable, reliable IAM services can help your organization permanently secure its operations even as modern cyber threats continue to evolve. Our experts at GuidePoint Security can help you define your organization’s IAM requirements as you work toward a mature modern IAM process.