What Problems Can Identity Management Solutions Solve and How?

Problem 1: Extended Login Times

When users try logging in into their systems or applications like emails, CRM, or anything else they use, it takes longer than usual. The delay can be due to the application asking them to log in again or showing that they have entered the wrong password or username. The application may also need the user to reset their account altogether. 

Whatever the reason, these inefficiencies may kill the enthusiasm of employees and decrease their productivity. Sadly, scenarios like these are common that consume a lot of time and may invite cybersecurity vulnerabilities, such as identity theft, stolen password, and so on. 

Solution: Identity management solutions and their capabilities like single sign-on and multifactor authentication can solve problems related to logins. 

• Companies can empower their employees with a single sign-on to let them log in for once and access their entire toolsets. As a result, login times accelerate and reduce the need for remembering all the passwords. In addition, this security measure narrows the attack surface.
• You can also use Single sign-on with multifactor authentication to reap more security benefits by adding another layer of security to your systems and applications. 

Identity management solutions, as mentioned above, are quick and effective that don’t consume your employees’ time. Instead, they are hassle-free and secure. 

Problem 2: Unable to Track Employees After Logins

Even if you have strong security measures in place during logins, it still is not enough. IN reality, it’s never enough when it comes to cybersecurity. What if a hacker managed to sneak into your systems despite having all the security?

It’s possible as hackers may use more advanced technology to break in. This is why you must ensure the highest possible care to protect your systems, network, and applications. 

It also explains why you must be able to monitor the users after they have logged in, which was not possible in traditional systems. As a result, hackers went on exploiting other systems or the entire network once they sneaked in. 

Solution: Identity management solutions can provide continuous user monitoring so you can learn who accesses what. These advanced solutions build a baseline for every identity depending on their user behavior. At the same time, identity management systems monitor users to find potential deviations. 

And when an identity management solution detects any deviation, it immediately blocks that account for further investigation. This way, even if a hacker has managed to enter a system, suspicious activity can lead them to be found with the help of an identity management solution.  

Problem 3: No Proper Control over Digital Privileges

In general, employees are allotted assets, physical or digital, based on their roles in an organization. If the privileges are not properly allocated or controlled, workflow inefficiencies and security loopholes may surface.

Improper privilege controls can result in users interfering with business processes outside their job roles and scopes. It may also lead to disturbances and conflicts, which can seriously affect workflow and operational efficiencies. 

In addition, hackers are always on the lookout to exploit accounts with such privileges that go uncontrolled. And this is enough to cause disasters in terms of security issues and breaches. 

Solution: You can manage and control privileges based on an employee’s job role and scope of work using identity management solutions like PAM and IGA. 

• Privileged Access Management (PAM) refers to a security mechanism that protects identities with capabilities beyond their job role. It involves technologies like password vaulting, multifactor authentication, and session monitoring. 
• Identity Governance Administration (IGA) is a security measure to find and remove unnecessary or redundant permissions given to user accounts. It also works while onboarding new employees by letting you set permissions based precisely on their job role with ease. Similarly, you can use IGA while removing a user, ensuring they have been removed from all the permissions. 

Problem 4: Poor Password Management

One of the most common security issues is poor password management. Weak passwords and their mismanagement can cost a business millions. 

It’s because every modern business employs systems, networks, and multiple applications that involve passwords. One mistake and hackers can break into your systems to cause enough trouble in terms of money, fame, and data. 

According to Verizon, 80% of breaches are associated with passwords. 

While passwords can be hard to remember and vulnerable to attacks like credential stuffing, they are the primary method to authenticate user identities. Hence, instead of hating them or recalling the inconveniences that accompany them, they need to manage passwords effectively. 

Solution: You can reduce password-related issues by implementing identity management solutions such as Single Sign-Ons (SSO), PAM, biometric authentication, etc., to your SaaS, web-based, and cloud applications. 

Using SSO can help you integrate your password management mechanism across different domains, attribute-sharing protocols and standards, and various authentication. Similarly, PAM can help you protect user credentials, while biometric authentication can further provide enhanced protection and remove password silos. 

In addition, you can also spread awareness within your organization on how to handle passwords carefully. Guide them not to repeat passwords, write them somewhere, or share passwords with others. 

You can also enlighten them on keeping strong passwords by combining capital and small letters, special characters, digits, and alphabets within their passwords, and other password-related safety standards to follow. 

Problem 5: Unclear Compliance Visibility

Regulatory compliance is a big concern for organizations, failing to which can cost them reputation and penalties. Compliance standards like HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS, and others require companies to abide by their regulations in order to protect business data like customer information. It’s essential due to increasing security breaches exposing millions of customer data and exploiting it. 

This is why organizations need to implement systems to stay always ready for audits. They must have a proper system to determine access privileges, track management, and document who access what and when. 

Solution: Corporate governance and compliance have increased IAM spending across the world. Using a solid identity management solution helps you stay compliant with the latest regulatory standards. These solutions also have the reporting functionality to log all the data and produce the necessary documents. In addition, IAM solutions can also automate reporting to simplify regulatory compliance and ensure smooth auditing. 

Problem 6: Difficulty in Managing Access Permissions for Remote Workers  

With remote work prevailing in the current business dynamics, companies are hiring people from across the globe. It not only gives them a chance to hire the best talents without geographical constraints but also reduces expenses in in-house arrangements. In addition, companies are also offering a flexible working environment to people from different time zones that also help them boost productivity. 

While a remote workforce comes with a lot of benefits, security is still a concern. As employees are located across the globe, companies face difficulty managing remote workers to access resources and permissions without involving security issues. In addition, companies also face trouble controlling the work practices of employees due to less visibility. 

Solution: Using centrally-managed identity access solutions with a broad spectrum of functionality to provide control and visibility into your remote workforce can help. It is a helpful solution for businesses of any size and scale, whether startups or enterprises. 

Problem 7: BYOD Challenges

Modern businesses allow employees, partners, vendors, and others to bring their personal devices to the office and connect them to corporate networks. The reasons can be personal or professional and may offer more convenience and productivity to employees. However, Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policies can come with security vulnerabilities that may enter into your systems. 

The BYOD policy challenges an organization in terms of how fast their IT team can react to safeguard business assets. And in doing so, they must not disrupt employee productivity. Furthermore, there are more risks involved with mobile devices that employees and others bring and access to your internal applications. In this case, your IT team can find it difficult to manage devices and access privileges.

Solution: Using an effective IAM strategy can help companies easily grant or revoke access to business systems and applications for employees. They can also monitor and secure the systems before they can get compromised. 

In addition to corporate-owned devices, IAM solutions can also offer secure access to business systems from employee-owned mobile devices, adhering to compliance guidelines.  

Problem 8: Managing Distributed Applications Is Complex  

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud-based applications are on the rise. They offer convenience, ease, and the option to use it anytime and anywhere on any device. However, these distributed applications make it complex to manage user identities on them. 

As a result of improper access management on these applications, there are more significant security risks while increasing the difficulty for users to manage passwords. 

Solution: A comprehensive identity management solution can offer a streamlined way to consolidate, simplify, and control access privileges. It can ease the process no matter where your critical apps are hosted – public or private cloud, hybrid environment, or data centers. Hence, users won’t have trouble accessing the applications, which decreases support costs while ensuring security. 

Problem 9: Maintaining App Integrations Updated

Using a lot of tools comes with many challenges like increased cost, managing the applications, maintaining its security and access permissions, and so on. In addition, users can get frustrated by switching apps time and again for different purposes. This is why organizations integrate applications to increase productivity and convenience and reduce time wastage. But you need to ensure that these integrations are updated, especially concerning user management and authentication, to mitigate inefficiencies. 

Solution: Applications change over time, whether they are cloud-based or on-premises. Therefore, a cloud-based identity management solution can help you update these applications and ensure the applications are fully functional. It also lifts burdens from your IT team in tracking dependencies between app versions and connectors. 

Conclusion

Cybersecurity solutions like IAM are built to provide immense benefits in terms of security, identity and access management, and productivity. And all these are essential to running a modern business. IAM has the capabilities to solve the problems highlighted above by utilizing the latest security technologies like SSO, MFA, etc. Thus, go for an identity management solution and secure your organization while reaping its wide-ranging advantages.