Cybersecurity is unquestionably a central issue that leads companies and administrations to develop their historical systems, which are often heterogeneous and not centralized, which induces an unnecessary burden for managers, hinders the application of a common security policy and above all generates compliance failures and risks of violation of important data.
In a regulatory context that is becoming more stringent, concerned about their constant change and transformation, companies of all sizes are being led to rethink the way they manage access to their information systems and the authentication methods of their employees.
To meet these challenges, IAM, IAG ("Identity & Access Governance"), a brick above IAM, a new spearhead for editors which is mainly associated with the implementation of rules: separation of powers, business roles, lesser privilege, certification of rights) and Federation technologies are at the centre of CIO and CISO projects.
But what do these technologies represent and how do they complement each other?
This issue is a key challenge for many CIOs today, who are investing large sums of money in order to widely deploy IAM (Identity & Access Management) tools in their organizations. In concrete terms, these high value-added software solutions, connected to corporate repositories, provide an effective response to identity management issues.
"As the information system is increasingly open to the Cloud and accessible to different collaborators and partners, it is now crucial to have a perfect control of the identities and access rights of the people who use the company's data. »
Authentication / Federation
These solutions are also a strategic lever because they simplify and centralize the employee authentication process. From multi-factor authentication (MFA) to single sign-on (SSO) single sign-on and unified authentication, as well as the federation that allows organizations and service providers to be interconnected in the Cloud, these technologies facilitate the connection to numerous applications (cross-functional and business) under the best conditions of security and compliance.
Governance
On this point, companies need to take a step up a gear and implement a genuine governance strategy that will make it possible to manage security and access control risks: separation of powers, least privilege rule, certification and rights review. This governance is also necessary for companies' external partners. It is therefore understandable that in order to carry out this project, an analysis of the identity lifecycle through "arrival", "departure", "mutation" and the definition of business roles is necessary, but not sufficient. It is also necessary to work with the business departments to define the business roles and the authorization model (ABAC / RBAC / OrgBAC) and to set up the monitoring and validation workflow processes to cover the scope of authorization management.
These few points are real prerequisites that companies must take into account in their cybersecurity policy. By doing so, they will reduce the major risks of identity theft and data theft, destruction or falsification to ensure compliance while simplifying the work of their employees.
