Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Manage user accounts and access rights centrally, efficiently and reliably
When you could still control entry to the company at the gate, it was easier to control access and authorizations for all employees. The digital age, flexible working models and the direct involvement of field staff bring new challenges.
Your systems are now accessed from the home office, on the train, at the airport or during a call at the customer's office. Naturally, you want your employees to be able to access everything they need for their work in these situations - without having to worry about whether everything has also been made available to the new colleague.
The technical solution that makes all this possible is called Identity & Access Management (IAM) or user and access administration.
What is Identity and Access Management?
An IAM system manages the user accounts for all of your company's employees and ensures that each user also has exactly the rights, licenses and options they need for their work. From an IT perspective, it therefore combines Identity Management and Authorization Management.
What are the advantages of Identity and Access Management?
A good system for Identity and Access Management brings advantages in many areas, which quite specifically save working time and at the same time can guarantee legal certainty in many points.
Simplified system access for all
An IAM system allows you to organize access to all your systems via a single login (single sign-on / SSO). This reduces frustration among your employees, who no longer have to remember a multitude of passwords and accesses. At the same time, remote access can be facilitated and clearly regulated.
Central management of identities
User accounts are created in IAM in only one central location and assigned the appropriate access rights and resources. Moreover, by linking specific rights to roles, tasks and applications within the company, these policies can be defined centrally - and adjusted individually if necessary.
Focus on security
By replacing numerous individual logins with central identities, the IAM system also enables optimized security measures in the single sign-on process. Strong passwords and two- or multi-factor authentication (2FA/MFA) are of course standard, but methods such as risk-based authentication (RBA) and user behavior analytics (UBA) allow additional factors to be included. Centralization reliably enables the security standard to be maintained at the highest possible level for all systems; there is no need to secure individual access points.
Automatic provisioning
Rights are automatically assigned according to roles - and can also be automatically revoked again, for example when someone leaves the company or a department. In these cases, of course, user accounts can also be automatically deactivated and deleted or archived after specified times (Identity Lifecycle Management). For IT staff, the main advantage of the IAM system is that many recurring processes can be automated.
Integrate external users
External users, for example freelancers or consultants, can also be given their own identities within your system through the IAM - with strictly limited rights and access to precisely those resources that are absolutely necessary for their work. And at the end of the collaboration, they are automatically logged out and their accesses are deactivated.
Increasing productivity through collaboration
Centrally controlled access to data and resources makes it easier to also work together on documents and databases securely. A good IAM system ensures secure data exchange and allows suitable software to be integrated for remote collaboration.
Adherence to compliance rules
The central management of identities and resources makes it easier to control and enforce the implementation of compliance rules; in addition, it can be used to ensure that all necessary information can be documented centrally for necessary audits.
Rational, simple, safe
Work more securely and effectively with Identity and Access Management from SIVIS Enterprise Security. Take a look at what we have to offer now and put the IAM system through its paces!
What problems does Identity and Access Management solve?
An IAM system can solve a whole range of challenges that regularly arise in the manual and decentralized creation of user accounts and management of access rights in each individual system:
- Inconsistent user access: Without an IAM system, you have to manually ensure that all users have the necessary access authorizations for their work. If this is not done (for example, after a new hire, transfer or promotion), they may have access to more data and applications than they should (a potential security risk!) or have to wait for their authorizations to be updated.
- Password Management: Users no longer need to assign a separate password for each system; authentication can be centralized.
- Compliance and audits: With individually and manually assigned rights, there is always the risk that the necessary compliance requirements are not always and consistently implemented. Auditing existing rights assignments is also time-consuming if they cannot be controlled centrally.
- Onboarding and offboarding: If user accounts have to be set up manually and individually for new employees, things are often forgotten, rights assignments remain inaccurate - the potential sources of problems are numerous. Problems can also arise when someone leaves the company or moves to another department: Have all authorizations been adjusted, all obsolete accounts deleted?
The effect: The manual management of user accounts and access rights on many individual systems not only ties up personnel resources in IT that could be used more sensibly for other tasks. It is also time-consuming, exhausting and not very user-friendly for employees. In other words, it prevents them from working productively and effectively.