Identity Management

Secure and automate your identity management processes

Our identities – the digital representations of ourselves and our employees – underpin organisational security in the 21st Century. Maximising the efficiency of identity and access management, then, is crucial to keeping organisational data secure, customers confident, and individuals protected.

We all have a digital identity, comprised of access, profiles, credentials, and more; if you’ve ever logged onto a system, you have an identity present. What makes our identities unique is that the information pulled together is relevant specifically to you, and – if misused – it can grant access to everything you do, and everything you are. With that in mind, identity is the key asset organisations must protect to remain fundamentally secure.

Doing so, however, is no mean feat and many organisations find themselves struggling to master identity access management, in the process jeopardising data and security. Luckily, you’ve got the experts in your corner.

Battling Identity Fatigue

With so much of our lives connected to the digital space, our data is only as secure as the services we trust with it – but with years’ worth of different credentials, spanning hundreds of sites and services, many of us have left ourselves open to attack through identity fatigue.

"Data is only as secure as the services we trust with it"

For organisations, the realisation that many of their staff are likely relying on old, simple, or repeated passwords, should spark immediate concern, as the result holes in the security perimeter pose a serious threat.

Tackling identity fatigue head on can help organisations to cement their defences, securing employee identities, and putting data and access out of harm’s way.

The Unseen Cost of Identity and Access Management

Mistreatment of identity and access management procedures also opens the organisation up to another type of risk: hidden costs. Duplicated accounts, multiple employee credentials, and password recovery all eat away at employees’ time and efficiency.

Meanwhile, duplicate systems, unused licenses, and former employees accessing expensive software equate to a sizeable financial burden that puts the organisation at an operational disadvantage.

Fortunately, there are technologies available which can circumvent the challenges of identity fatigue, security, and hidden costs – including:

Joiners Movers Leavers

Automate the JML process to provide and revoke permissions to joiners, movers, and leaders, while minimising human error, speeding up the joiner process, and preventing software harvesting by former employees. By embracing JML automation, organisations can take steps towards safeguarding vital identities and data, limiting access to what users need, when they need it – as well as generating plenty of data for HR department benefit from GDPR compliance and data generation.

Single Sign-On

By doing away with simple, repeated, or old credentials and unifying them under a single identity, an employee can continue to enjoy autonomy while securely traversing the organisation’s network. What’s more, SSO’s centralised management ensures that only the right people have access to the right data, at the right time, with the right level of access.

Multi-Factor Authentication

When it comes to cracking into identities, methods can range from insidious phishing scams, to brute force attacks, depending on the hacker and the weak spots they discover. Evolving credentials from a simple ‘username and password’ structure to requiring various factors – such as a one-time passcode, GPS reading, or biometric data – increases security and makes for a more costly, complicates experience for attackers, often seeing them move onto bigger fish.

Self-Service

Relieve the pressure on your IT helpdesk by empowering users to manage their own passwords, while also being able to request access to data and groups. Without the distraction, you’ll find tangible savings in time and money, as well as better focus and efficiency from across the organisation. Meanwhile, delegate management access to those who need it, protecting the system with regular access reviews.

“We’ve got 15,000 students live at any one time, so to manually manage on-boarding and de-provisioning is a very onerous task for the IT team. Now, we have the automated management of staff and student account provisioning.”

Steve Parry, Newham College, London