By Paul Wiederkehr, Product Manager
IT and business leaders are continuously assessing the opportunity to leverage cloud technologies in order to deliver reduced costs, scalability, agility, and efficiencies to the business. The adoption and implementation of SaaS solutions is continuing to occur across organizations as various departments within the business deploy SaaS solutions from project management software to communication applications to marketing software to recruiting and sales tools. As these SaaS solutions are introduced to the business, security leaders are challenged to ensure security maintains a priority and that the transition to a SaaS solution does not create risk or potential compromise for the business.
As organizations embrace the inherent benefits of SaaS solutions as part of their digital transformation journey, security leaders should highly consider implementing an Identity Access and Management (IAM) solution to protect valuable corporate assets and ensure resources are secure. A dynamic IAM solution will enable customers, workforce, and partners to securely access the necessary applications, tools, and resources they need without compromising the safety of a company’s valuable assets. IT and security leaders should consider the following when assessing a cloud IAM solution to secure their business:
- What skillsets are needed to maintain an on-premises solution?
- Is a single vendor or a set of vendors required to support my use cases?
- Is the support of legacy systems critical to the on-going health of the business?
- What resources or costs can be re-allocated by choosing a SaaS solution?
- Is the ability to customize authentication workflows and the user experience essential to support your use cases?
As is true with most solutions, no silver bullet exists to address the identity and access management needs of a business. An understanding of requirements across the business is extremely important to ensure a successful and positive outcome. A healthy balance must be achieved between ensuring a secure business operating environment and promoting an exceptional user experience. A lack of balance in one direction or the other can create friction with users are compromise with security. Teams should take care to consider the strategic value of the IAM solution being deployed in the context of how the business operates as well as the company’s overall business objectives.
We understand the challenges and have a plan to help guide your team to design and deploy the IAM solution best suited to meet your business needs. From on-premises, to hybrid, to SaaS – the Identity Platform provides the flexibility, security, and simplicity required to secure and protect your business and ensure a fantastic user experience from anywhere at anytime.
Learn more via our white paper: Navigating a Successful Cloud IAM Migration
