Identity and Access Management (IAM):
Traditional Identity Access Management solutions have always been tough to justify for non-global 1000 companies with smaller IT budgets. Some of the reasons why traditional Identity Access Management solutions have been so difficult to justify and implement include:
- Most Identity Access Management solutions are software-based and require multiple components to be functional.
- Software solutions require additional servers and operating systems, raising costs and overhead.
- Expensive, per-user annual licensing fees that must be budgeted year after year.
- Long deployment cycles that require many hours of professional consulting services, raising deployment costs significantly.
- Can be intrusive to existing applications, requiring customization and making it difficult to integrate.
- Often requires the migration of user accounts from departmentally or geographically separate data stores into one centrally managed Meta Directory, causing difficulties with existing organizational and management structures.
- Many traditional Identity Access Management solutions are point-play solutions that do not offer a full Identity Access Management suite. For example, some offer account provisioning, but not authentication, others offer User Self-Help but not user account management, etc.
- Many corporate identity management steps require steep learning curves and the complete re-education of IT resources.
What many companies fail to realize is that the benefits of Identity Access Management can be achieved without the headaches and long deployment cycles associated with traditional full suite Identity Access Management solutions. By carefully selecting just a few of the most popular identity management solutions, businesses can recover valuable IT resources and improve operational efficiency.
This whitepaper highlights two popular Identity Access Management features that are part of IDSentrie's unified Identity Access Management solution and illustrates how Identity Access Management projects can be justified for quick return-on-investment (ROI).
Identity & Access Management Components
Identity management is a system of integrated components that enable organizations to properly authenticate, provision, manage, synchronize, and track user and application activity across the enterprise. There are many different types of Identity and Access Management solutions that range greatly in price, deployment difficulty, and functionality. The major Identity Access Management categories include the following:
Full Suite Solutions - provide complete solutions with directory services, provisioning, self-help, single sign-on, secure access and Federated identity elements. These solutions are complex and expensive to deploy.
Provisioning Solutions provide account life cycle management with account, workflow, and role-based provisioning. Many provisioning solutions provide user self-service and single sign-on extensions and are less complex than full suite solutions, but are still too expensive for most companies.
Secure Access Solutions provide strong multi-factor authentication with hardware tokens, smart cards, biometrics, certificates, and single sign-on. Does not provide any account life cycle management and are typically high in management overhead.
Federated Identity Solutions provide access and trust policies based on virtual communities. Single sign-on for partner, vendor, and application access and requires modification and upgrading of most applications and systems. Standards are being defined and there is very little Federated technology implemented in production environments.
The Benefits of Identity Access Management:
By implementing a well-planned Identity Access Management solution, corporations can reap many benefits that can help improve operational efficiency, reduce security risks, improve visibility, and enhance compliance and internal controls. The benefits of A10's IDSentrie 1000 solution include:
Improved Efficiency and Minimized Management Overhead For Identity Access Management:
- Centralized account management simplifies account provisioning and termination, and reduces the management overhead associated with manually provisioning multiple data stores.
- Synchronized identity information reduces errors, improves security and user experience.
- Centralized authentication policies consolidate authentication and access control services.
- Authentication Proxy services decrease deployment times and eliminate the need for additional user accounts and passwords.
- User Self-Help services increases user productivity and reduce IT and help desk involvement.
Increased Security, In-depth Visibility and Compliance
- Centralized account management identifies unauthorized & stale accounts.
- Identity-based reporting & logging correlates user activity with identity information to take the mystery out of network troubleshooting and forensics.
