Modern identity management: the channel’s opportunity

With the ever-changing digital landscape, businesses today must manage more digital identities than ever before. For example, employees often have multiple digital identity profiles across tens if not hundreds of different applications, while third parties – such as consultants, supply chain partners and clients – may also need access to a company’s infrastructure. The growing use of IoT devices means that machine identities are also part of this environment so require proper management and protection. Furthermore, the increased reliance on cloud-based services and the prevalence of hybrid working have only added to the surge in the number of identities.

Managing this proliferation of digital profiles can be complex, yet it is essential to set and enforce policies around who and what can access infrastructure. Otherwise, companies could find themselves exposed to both security and compliance risks. Many businesses are aware of this challenge and recognise that they need to modernise their identity strategies. However, they also acknowledge they need help from trusted advisors in order to select, deploy and then manage the right platform for their organisations.

While the channel has a proven track record of supporting cyber deployments and providing expert guidance for selecting and implementing the best technologies for their customers, identity management solutions have not always received the same priority as more headline-grabbing solutions, such as Enterprise Detection and Response (EDR) or Incident Detection and Response (IDR). For channel organisations, identity management represents a further opportunity to offer even more value to their customers.

Migrating from legacy tools

Traditionally, organisations have relied on point solutions to manage which employees, partners and machines can access the different applications and network resources. However, there are drawbacks to this approach. All these piecemeal solutions add complexity to management, require integration, and increase costs. Additionally, this approach creates silos, making it difficult to monitor all types of identities – whether human or artificial, located on-premises or in the cloud – in a holistic way.

Indeed, organisations still relying on various, specialised tools may find it difficult to monitor certain groups of users or applications, as some of these tools are only compatible with certain cloud environments or on-premises setups. In these scenarios, administrators are often required to switch between multiple management consoles, gather data from different sources, and create their own reports in order to get a complete picture of their systems. In some extreme cases, they might not even manage access for certain types of users, applications or locations, creating both governance and security risks.

The next generation of identity management platforms

Identity and Access Management (IAM) should form the foundation of any modern identity security strategy. In short, it is the who, what, where, when, how, and why of technology access, and is designed to protect personal and corporate data from theft by using ‘identity’ and ‘access’ to govern how users interact with data and applications across an organisation’s systems and networks. On top of IAM, there are several other solutions that provide more fine-combed visibility, control, and auditing over access rights.

One of these is Privileged Access Management (PAM), which consists of a set of policies, processes, and technologies to secure privileged accounts and monitor their actions which establish control over the elevated privileges of identities on a network. By temporarily elevating privileges for a user just in time with just enough admin to perform critical job functions, PAM helps organisations reduce their digital attack surface, mitigate insider threats, and identify and close any security gaps created by negligence.

There are also Identity and Governance Administration (IGA) tools, which enable enterprises to set and enforce policies about identity and access, which can be applied across the entire enterprise. Features include Identity Governance – encompassing segregation of duties, role management, attestation, analytics, and reporting – and Identity Administration, which deals with account administration, credentials administration, user and device provisioning, and managing entitlements.

The crucial difference between these latest solutions and more traditional point solutions is that they can be managed centrally from one cloud-based platform, making it easier for administrators to identify and mitigate risks, as well as streamline the way identities are managed. This platform-based approach also fuels rapid innovation.

Innovation in managing identities

Some of the latest advancements to help organisations strengthen their ability to detect, respond to, and recover from identity-related security incidents, ultimately reducing risks and enhancing overall cybersecurity posture, include:

● Predictive analytics; this involves the use of data analysis and predictive modelling techniques to anticipate and manage user identity-related events, behaviours, and risks within an organisation's information systems. It leverages historical and real-time data to make informed predictions about user behaviour, access patterns, and potential security threats. This proactive approach helps organisations enhance their security posture, streamline access management, and improve overall operational efficiency.

● Identity Detection and Response (IDR), which focuses on the proactive detection and rapid response to identity-related threats and incidents within an organisation's digital environment. Similar to predictive analytics, it monitors and analyses user behaviours, access patterns, and other identity-related activities to identify suspicious or unauthorised activities that could indicate a security breach or compromise.

● Centralised and automated approach in identity management refers to the practice of managing user identities, access privileges, and authentication processes in a consolidated and automated manner. It involves maintaining a repository of user information, adopting a single sign-on approach, automating the process of provisioning and deprovisioning, implementing role-based access control, enforcing policies, providing self-service portals, authenticating and authorising users, conducting audits and generating reports, and integrating with other IT systems.

The rise of digital operations has made managing IT security ecosystems challenging. The result is that employees and other users (human and machine) have excessive and/or redundant access to different systems, applications, and data. This is the access they do not require to do their jobs, so represents both a risk to security and compliance.

The channel has a critical role to play in guiding organisations through the selection, customisation, deployment and integration of a centralised identity management platform that fits their exact infrastructure requirements. Furthermore, partners also have the opportunity to oversee these platforms on an ongoing basis, as a managed service. Not only could this help partner organisations develop new recurring revenue streams, but it will also strengthen their relationships with their customers, helping them to deliver even more of a value-add.