Identity and Access Management, or IAM, can be a daunting concept for many businesses, especially when they’re still small. However, it is a practice to implement from the start. Not only will it aid your development and support the company’s continued growth but will also help reduce risk and keep you and your clients’ data secure.
With all of those benefits, it’s not surprising that IAM is set to grow into a near $20 billion industry by 2024.
Still unsure about IAM and how an identity and access management system can help your business? Keep reading.
What Is an Identity and Access Management System?
IAM is a framework of policies and/or procedures that are targeted at controlling user access to specific resources or technologies.
In the majority of instances, identity management incorporates four primary areas of recognition.
- Pure Identity
- User Access
- Service Functions
- Identity Federation
In short, it allows you to define who sees what and what those people can do to that data, thus offering enhanced data security and integrity.
How Does an Identity and Access Management System Work?
An IAM works by controlling the access rights of a multitude of users. The ‘log-in’ component would apply to individuals, but beyond that, the system offers controls on a wide range of factors.
You have the standard controls, such as:
- User Creation
- User Modification
- User Deletion
However, an IAM offers much more than that. The full spectrum of its capabilities will include areas such as:
- Authentication
- Authorization
- Roles
- Delegation
This means you have full control over who can see what data and what they can do with it. This can be modified to cover any degree of granularity depending on the size of your business.
Complete Control Over Who See What Data
By going beyond mere user creation, a full access management system implementation will allow you to implement a solid layer of protection with the right flexibility to no hinder your users when doing their job.
From micro-managing the rights of individuals, down to a Read, Write, or Delete level, you can work with groups and family settings to allocate rights for different areas or modules of the system.
This means you can take a group of employees with the same function and control their rights on that group level. This not only makes implementation easy but leaves you with room to tweak individual access, for example on any project related work.
These changes could still be made on an individual level without impacting the group as a whole.
Take Control over Your User Access Today
As we move deeper and deeper into the digital age the importance of proper and correct identity and access management system is becoming more imperative.
Companies looking to work with you, are going to want to know how their data is secure, how certain elements can be controlled to remain visible only to those that need it.
While for a small business, concerns like this might seem a long way off, there is no better time than now to create a solid framework for said considerations.
Are you ready to take the plunge? Get in touch with us today and we can find the right solution to fit your needs.
