Identity and access management: who’s that and what is he doing here?
In today’s highly connected world, businesses increasingly rely on technology and data. This dependency has increased the threat of cyber attacks and data theft. ‘Identity and Access Management’ (IAM) is a crucial approach to prevent such security incidents. This blog explores the fundamentals of IAM and highlights its importance in the context of cyber security.
What is identity- and access management?
Identity and Access Management (IAM) concerns managing digital identities and regulating access to resources within an organization’s network. It ensures that authorized persons have access to relevant information at the right time, while unauthorized users are prevented from reaching sensitive data. IAM comprises several components, including authentication, authorization and user management.
The identity and access management process, or IAM process, includes the following steps:
- Identity provisioning: The first phase of the IAM process involves the creation of digital identities for employees, partners and customers. This involves collecting data such as a name, e-mail address, function and role.
- Authentication: Next, user identity is verified through mechanisms such as passwords, biometrics or multi-factor authentication (MFA).
- Authorization: After identity verification, access to resources is granted based on the user’s role and responsibilities within the organization. In this phase, users are granted permissions and privileges.
- Monitoring and reporting: The final stage of the IAM process involves monitoring user activity and generating reports on access and usage. This step detects possible anomalies or suspicious activity that may indicate a security breach.
The importance of identity- and access management in cyber security
IAM plays a vital role in ensuring the security of an organization’s network and data. Some of the reasons why IAM is vital for cyber security are:
- Enhanced security: IAM contributes to increased security levels by maintaining strict control over access to sensitive information, minimizing the risk of data breaches and security incidents.
- Compliance: IAM supports organizations in complying with various regulations, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS and GDPR. It ensures measures to protect sensitive data and limits access to authorized users, which is crucial to meet compliance requirements.
- Increased efficiency: IAM improves operational efficiency by automating the process of creating and managing digital identities. This reduces the workload of IT teams and speeds up the accurate granting of access.
- Cost savings: IAM helps organizations save costs by reducing the risk of security incidents and data breaches, resulting in the avoidance of costly legal proceedings, fines and reputational damage.
So, what do you need to do for identity and access management?
- Develop appropriate policies and procedures: To ensure secure access to systems and data, it is essential to formulate appropriate identity and access management policies and procedures. The policy should clearly define which persons have access to what resources, for what purpose and under what circumstances. Different categories of users, such as full-time and part-time employees, contractors, volunteers, students and visitors, should be considered.
- Guidelines for obtaining audit records: The policy should include specific guidelines for obtaining audit records, including measures to protect them from tampering. It should also address the identification of processes to be performed or authorized by multiple people. A key point is that the policy should apply not only to systems directly under the organization’s control, but also to all locations where the organization’s identities are used.
- Single Sign-On (SSO): Implementing organizational identities for online services is crucial to manage access to these services and revoke this access when an individual leaves the organization. Temporary accounts created for testing processes should be deleted or suspended as soon as they are no longer needed.
Multi-factor authentication to improve security of privileged accounts
To increase user account security, it is vital to consider multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all user accounts. It is crucial to select authentication methods that are proportionate to the risk and consistent with users’ natural ways of working. When implementing MFA, there should be considerations for user-to-service, user-to-device and device-to-service authentication.
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA): is essential for all online service accounts to provide protection against password guessing and theft. Users should have the option to choose from different self-authentication factors, such as SMS or e-mail messages, biometrics or physical tokens, as no single method is suitable for everyone or all environments and devices.
- A password policy: should be user-friendly and strike a balance between ease of use and security. The aim is to minimize the number and complexity of passwords to remember, for example by using single sign-on or allowing password managers. In this way, users are discouraged from unsafe practices such as reusing passwords, choosing easy-to-guess passwords or writing them down.
- Technical security measures: such as Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), setting account restrictions or blocks, monitoring suspicious behaviour and preventing the use of weak or exposed passwords, should be implemented. It is essential to protect references appropriately, both at rest and during transfer, to ensure overall safety.
In essence, considering multi-factor authentication for all user accounts, selecting appropriate authentication methods, implementing password policies and applying technical controls are fundamental steps to strengthen user account security. These measures help reduce the risk of unauthorized access and protect sensitive data for organizations.
the OpenSight 10 new year’s cyber security resolutions
During the OpenSight 10 new year’s cyber security resolutions, we will publish a blog each week about each of the ten resolutions as listed below:
- The company’s digital assets.
- Are my colleagues engaged and aware of cyber security?
- Are our company assets under control?
- Architecture focused on security and the business.
- How to keep vulnerability management in order?
- Who’s that? And what is he doing here?
- How do we protect digital assets?
- Is this normal behavior and does it happen more often?
- Preparation is key!
- Is there a weak link in my supply chain?
With these 10 new year’s resolutions, we at OpenSight hope to give you some insight regarding the ten steps you could take to decrease the chance and impact of an incident.
Want to know more?
Be sure to keep an eye on our blogs where, following these Cyber Security resolutions for 2024, we will cover all 10 topics in detail. Follow us on LinkedIn to be the first to know about all our updates!