| Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Electronic frauds represent a billion dollar loss in the Americas regions, especially frauds targeting financial systems, banks, payments, mobile and web applications.
By Laila Robak
Laila Robak | IT Security Entrepreneur
The greatest risk is related to identity theft, that allows cyber criminals to access accounts, data, internal networks and corporate services.
With the arrival of new technologies, and the increase in services provided on line, the security surrounding user authentication cannot be simply based on the traditional one-factor authentication method: user name and password. As we have seen in recent months, there’s a considerable increase in attacks targeting the theft of multiple passwords, as an example we have the recent attacks targeting Yahoo! and LinkedIn.
When it comes to online services, there’s a huge risk for the companies as many times their employees use corporate credentials for personal accounts as well, let’s think of it this way, an average computer user, uses 8 passwords per day, it’s not surprising that they will save, share, annotate, and repeat those passwords in different services.
It’s here where a comprehensive IAM (Identity and Access Management) platform, can assist the companies. A complete IAM platform will allow companies to provide the mobility and efficiency required by today’s world, when it comes to employees and customers, by:
· Increasing Security
· Preventing Unauthorized Access
· Decreasing costs with infrastructure
· Decreasing costs with IT and Support
· Allowing services 24×7 based on self service
· Centralizing the control of roles and permissions / authentication and authorizations
With a comprehensive IAM solution, the organization can guarantee that appropriate individuals (both internal and external users) are getting access to relevant tools and resources ensuring that cybercriminals are kept out of the organization.
Why should I implement an IAM solution?
As we saw before, online threats and attacks are more frequent and they tend to increase as the services move to the online environment, implementing a scalable IAM platform allows you to protect your business against these threats, including different authentication methods to attend the level of assurance needed and as well allowing efficiency to your employees and to your customers.
Besides the online threats, many researches have found that over 60% of online shopping carts are abandoned at the registration page, that is usually long and requires more information than needed to the user. By implementing an IAM Single Sign On you can integrate your services authentication, and allow your customers to try and utilize new services without having to register again, generating many new business opportunities.
You can also implement self-services, allowing users to manage their own identity, which takes away the responsibility and the burden on the IT and Customer Service Departments, releasing resources and decreasing costs.
Apart from monetary savings, there are other benefits that allow organizations to know better its customers, having one single identity allows users to be more accurate on the information, versus having to update and to apply changes in several registrations
An effective IAM platform must be flexible and give companies options, like for example, different authentication methods that can be implemented per company’s needs and also updated and replaced easily to follow security needs and changes in the corporate environment and the market. For example, for applications that require low level of security companies may want to allow users to utilize their own social identities (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, Windows 365, etc.); while for applications requiring a high level of security such as financial transactions, companies may choose to use advanced methods like biometrics, OTP, voice recognition, National ID, etc..
Benefits of a complete IAM platform:
· Allow companies to comply with local and international laws, such as anti-money laundering to avoid electronic frauds
· Ensure that only authorized people have access to the systems and applications
· Increase business opportunities for ecommerce
· Comply and enforce government data protection laws
· Reduce costs with support and infrastructure
· Reduce costs with customer service
· Enables services 24×7
· Different authentication methods can be used in conjunction to comply with different levels of assurance needed
· Allows the use of logic (for example, if it’s the first time the customer uses the platform it can request a second step authentication; if he is accessing from a different location; if it’s a payment; etc. to confirm the identity and transaction authenticity)
· Prevent fraud, theft of electronic identity and credentials
· Centralized control of permissions and authorizations
An effective IAM solution should be flexible, with a fast and cost effective deployment, allowing the company to focus in their immediate needs, but allowing them to scale and expand the reach of the platform according security and market needs and changes.
Contact us to learn more about the IAM platform and a get a free consultation.
Artigos em outros idiomas são publicados em International News | Articles in other languages are published in the International News
