Identity management is a broad area that deals with identifying users accessing a system or a network and managing their access to the system by awarding user rights and restrictions. At the base level of identity management is defining users and assigning rights on what they can and cannot do on the system. At the organization level, identity management is important since it ensures security enhance productivity and reduce redundancies.
Identity management system
Since this is a sensitive issue when it comes to the security of the organization’s data and sensitive information, there are several Identity Management Systems that are available either as a paid service or accessible for free on the website. Due to identity theft and system intrusions organizations are starting to take this more seriously. These systems have been designed with the sole purpose of granting access to the right users under the right context. Such a system comes with provisioning software, reporting and monitoring capabilities, password management tools, security policy enforcement software among other applications that support identity management.
Why should you care?
Identify management if at the heart of any business security plan. With the modern contemporary digital enabled society, security and productivity are inextricably linked, and a breach in the security firewall can greatly affect productivity. If an organization is compromised, there are high chances that the intrusion came from compromised user credentials. Criminal hacking, malware attacks phishing attempts will initially try to manipulate user identity. According to cybersecurity ventures, the costs paid to ransom globally are expected to go beyond the 5 billion dollars by the end of the year. Due to the recent manipulations and unauthorized intrusions, the General Data Protection Regulation has come with a new policy that calls on organizations to invest in strong security and beef up user access controls.
How do you benefit?
Due to the overreliance on systems to do business, your organization will be required to give external users to your system. Customers, contractors, employees suppliers, partners are among the people who will have access to your system. An identity management system will allocate user rights to each of them that are limited to the context of their access. The ID system will also keep a log of all authorized users and their level of access. It will also detect and lock out unauthorized access to the system and alert you of possible intrusion.
