Building a safe work environment takes time and effort but is crucial for all businesses. Productive employees produce better results, and a safer workplace reduces risk for the company and its workers.

A strong identity access management (IAM) system ensures reasonable assurance that networks, databases, and applications are secure. It enables bespoke access based on role and permissions while reducing shadow IT.

No matter the industry, security is highly important to keep sensitive information safe and away from prying eyes. This is why things such as hipaa compliant email and targeted cybersecurity has grown substantially over time so that businesses can work effectively and efficiently with minimal disruption.

Secure Access to Information

Security in the workplace requires more than just preventing unauthorized access to data. It also involves ensuring people have the right level of access to necessary tools. IAM helps companies achieve this by ensuring that every user has the proper access for their job, uses the correct device, and is at the right time. It is done through authentication, which verifies a person’s identity, and authorization, which grants them the correct permissions for each system or tool they use.

IAM in workplace provides a way to verify an employee’s identity and permission levels through a centralized platform. This automation reduces the workload on IT admins by eliminating the need for password resets or manual account provisioning. It can also help automate processes for granting new employees or changing access privileges for existing ones.

While providing a secure workplace, IAM is also designed to keep productivity high. For example, by enabling single sign-on, identity access management ensures that employees can access data and third-party tools without entering multiple login credentials.

It can also provide reports of important information like login times, systems access, and data exporting. It can allow business owners or managers to see what their employees are doing on the company’s network and ensure they follow rules and regulations. It could help prevent costly pitfalls caused by fraudulent actions or non-compliance.

Reduce the Risk of Data Breaches

Identity access management can help lower the risk of breaches as more companies embrace cloud and remote work by ensuring that only authorized users can access company data and tools. In addition, it can guarantee adherence to laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act and GDPR and offer a thorough audit trail for security events.

It can guard against insider threats and lower the risk of breaches by preventing “privilege creep,” which happens when employees have more privileges than required. For example, with IAM in place, an employee logging in from a public Wi-Fi network can be automatically prompted for additional credentials to ensure they’re not being hacked from a device that has been compromised in another attack.

It is also vital for protecting non-human objects like APIs, secrets, agents, and containers. For example, IAM could use MFA to secure APIs and secrets that don’t require a user interface and that aren’t stored on the same server as your user database.

Although it offers additional security, it’s crucial to remember that you also need to consider your workforce’s and customers’ needs. After all, no one wants to experience the pain of verifying their identity multiple times daily or being frustrated by password lockouts that lead to productivity loss and help desk requests.

Deactivate and Deprovision Accounts Quickly

When a user leaves the company, IT must ensure that their accounts in systems and applications across the organization are deactivated or deleted. Otherwise, the former employee could continue to access company data and resources online, which is a security risk and encourages terrible actors to target the company again.

IAM provides a way to keep this process quick and easy. IAM solutions with provisioning and deprovisioning capabilities can automatically synchronize and update account information in multiple systems when user status changes occur, such as when an employee is terminated or transferred to another role.

That makes it easier for HR to provide a list of users and the applications they need to be de-provisioned from, which speeds up the IT team’s de-provisioning process. IAM also helps prevent zombie accounts from being active in the directory despite being disabled. Zombie accounts are vulnerable to hacks, and if they have the proper credentials, they can cause data breaches.

A system with de-provisioning capabilities can automatically deactivate the user’s directory account, remove subscriptions and licenses, revoke access to folders, file servers, and other services, and move the account to an OU for disabled users in the active directory. These steps help minimize the threat of unauthorized access to sensitive data after an employee leaves, a crucial requirement for compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

Ensure Compliance

By centrally managing user access and identity governance, IAM ensures that users have the privileges necessary to do their jobs. It can help protect against security breaches and meet data protection regulations like the European Union’s GDPR or HIPAA in the United States.

IAM also assists in confirming users’ identities, which is a crucial first step in lowering the possibility that hackers will use stolen credentials to gain access to network resources and private information. Offering reports following logins based on the type of authentication used, such as role-based access controls (RBAC) or attribute-based authorization (ABAC), can also assist businesses in meeting compliance standards.

A robust IAM solution should include password management, privileged account management, identity governance, and more, but it’s essential to implement IAM in stages to address your organization’s unique needs.

For example, you can use IAM to simplify user login experiences, reducing the number of help desk tickets from employees seeking assistance with forgotten or lost passwords. It leads to increased productivity and reduced risk of breaches by eliminating oversights that could allow unauthorized access to data or systems.

Identity access management can streamline the processes for granting and revoking access to resources, making it easier for business leaders to make informed decisions about employee security. A centralized IAM architecture can also ensure that privilege misuse and abuse are detected quickly so that access to sensitive information can be revoked before it causes significant damage.