Access Management

Ensure Efficient, Secure, and Compliant Operations

Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems automate and facilitate the execution of the governing structures and processes, thus helping ensure efficient, secure, and compliant operations.

Enforce and Facilitate Access to Resources

Reduce Risk of Data Breaches

Most organizations keep their data and business processes in the cloud. IAM stops hackers from getting to these assets through legitimate employee logins.

Centralize Access Control

By centralizing access control, you ensure that the right employee gets an appropriate set of systems and permissions in an automated and rule-based way.

Lighten IT Workload

Letting your IT/office administrator control access across the entire IT environment both protects your data and ensures satisfied employees thanks to optimized IT processes.

Ensure Compliance

Comply with requirements such as DSGVO, HIPAA, and ISO 27001 by following the “Principle of Least Use” and tracking all transactions.

Control Access Across Your Entire IT Environment

Identity and Access Management (IAM) is more than just about managing passwords. IAM processes deal with network access rights, privileges, and group memberships. They enforce and facilitate the configured access for an organization’s users to systems, applications, data, and more. Whether cloud-based or on-prem, IAM controls who is granted access to what across your entire IT environment.

Thus, Identity and Access Management covers two crucial aspects:

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Access to the network (authentication): How do you make sure that the user who logs on to the network is who they claim to be?

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Permissions within the network (authorization): Which systems and data are available to the user after login?

Ensuring only authorized users can access your business data and systems and only at the appropriate permission level is vital to cybersecurity.

Boost Productivity, Security, and Compliance

Increase Productivity

Employees can be productive upon arrival thanks to rapid provisioning of accounts and resources.

Boost Efficiency

Centralized information makes it more efficient to manage user account details.

Increase Flexibility

Changes are processed quickly and accurately across the network without any manual intervention.

Improve Security

Thanks to the central access control it provides, IAM safeguards sensitive data against breaches or malicious activity.

Assist Compliance

Extensive audit trails help assist compliance efforts with HIPAA, COX, and many other regulations.

Why Organizations Use IAM Solutions

Organizations are increasingly integrating IAM solutions into their IT infrastructure for many reasons, including increased affordability, better IAM functionality, increased compliance pressures, controlled access, reduction of human error, to protect and manage resources, and more.

Affordable Identity and Access Management Solutions

The first and most prominent reason is how affordable Identity and Access Management solutions have become.

The big organizations that started with basic automation software have now expanded to access governance, helpdesk delegation, and other more advanced features.

The smaller organizations that used to have a team manually process records, have now introduced automation for onboarding and offboarding. In many cases, these solutions actually save organizations money.

With a saturation of vendors in the Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) market, prices have been driven down over the years. This has made IAM products accessible to most organizations, no matter their size.

Improved IAM Functionality

The second reason is an improved IAM functionality.

In the last decade, technology in all industries has taken leaps and the IGA industry is no exception. Twenty years ago, the industry intended to aid the role of the System and Network Administrators. Today, IGA has now evolved into a multi-departmental aid, with the helpdesk, HR Department, IT department and management all reaping the benefits.

Take our Identity-as-a-Service product for example. It offers automation, access governance, password management, helpdesk delegation, role-based access control, reporting, and self-service. These features not only create a lean infrastructure that eliminates many, and in some cases all, manual efforts, but they also reduce errors and streamline the workflow. IAM offers a central port for all departments to access and input information and report on the latter as they please.

Compliance with Regulations

Regulations such as HIPAA, FERPA, SOX, and NCES 97-859 have put pressure on organizations to implement safeguards against wrongful access of private information. Organizations also face an increasing number of quality requirements from their customers, such as ISO 27001.

These requirements have led to organizations seeking solutions such as password management, two-factor authentication, and role-based access control to ensure that each person has the correct access—no more, no less.

During the employment relationship, the authorizations should be managed correctly. When the employment relationship ends, accesses and authorizations should be withdrawn promptly and completely. Incorrect management of user credentials leads to unnecessary costs in many organizations. For example, an organization is at high risk of a breach if after a change of department, a project’s end, or a resignation, the organization fails to cut off access to licenses, storage capacity, and other IT resources that are no longer needed.

To meet such stringent requirements, each user should only have access to the data they need to perform activities according to the so-called “Principle of Least Use.”

Our solutions are fully compliant with the prevailing norms and standards and can assist your organization in adhering to strict data privacy laws. With an IAM solution, your IT department knows that access to systems and applications is secured properly. In addition, our solutions offer auditing functionality that provides complete transparency on which users are using which applications, at what time, and from what location.

Controlled Access

Organizations are not only tasked with providing secure access to applications and resources, but also face the responsibility of correctly managing access rights. In addition, users need access to new applications and data regularly.

One of the most unnoticed security risks an organization can face stems from employees acquiring too many access rights because of role or responsibility changes. This is called “privilege creep.” In addition to this security risk, expensive licenses often continue to run undiscovered for a long period of time. This can also happen when former employees possess access to their old accounts, even after they leave the organization or position. These “abandoned accounts” are also known as orphaned accounts.

By implementing an IAM solution, organizations can fully automate user management and access to various systems, applications, and information. Account information and access rights are automatically kept up-to-date so that security audits are easy to complete and you can save on unnecessary license costs. User account lifecycle processes are executed rapidly to create, update, and deactivate users accordingly.

Reduction of Human Error

Organizations typically have a large number of profiles that the IT department is responsible for monitoring. Without a centralized IAM solution, the authentication and authorization of access to resources are usually managed manually by the IT department. Not only is this expensive and unproductive, but it is often prone to potential human-error and oversight.

By automating the entire process and linking it to your source systems, your IT department will no longer need to manually manage access rights to data. Changes are implemented immediately and without errors in the network. As a result, IT employees spend less time on routine matters and have more time to work on impactful projects for your organization.

Single Sign-On

It can be very time-consuming for your employees if they have to repeatedly enter a username and password to access different applications and resources.

With a fully-fledged Identity & Access Management solution, your IT department can automatically manage user accounts and employees can receive quick and easy access to their resources via Single Sign-On (SSO). With SSO, your employees can receive access to all their applications and data via a personal dashboard by only logging in once.

In addition, our solutions offer an SSO authentication method where your employees or students can log in using a QR code that can be attached to a badge. By simply holding it in front of their device’s camera, they are automatically logged in to their account.

You can finally ensure that everyone has the tools and resources they need to succeed in their job without complications.

Manage the Entire User Account Lifecycle

User accounts require continual checking and adjustment to account for promotions, reorganizations, new locations, and other role changes. Therefore, IAM systems oversee an organization’s entirety of user account lifecycles for every employee throughout their employment.

Such comprehensive management requires streamlined, secure processes for:

  • Onboarding: Initial creation, provisioning, and user account claiming for new hires
  • “Reprovisioning”: Updating and reviewing user access rights
  • Offboarding: Deactivating user accounts and restricting access when an employee departs the organization

IAM processes help ensure that employees can access the resources they need to work efficiently while minimizing security and compliance risks.

Protect and Manage Resources

An organization cannot function without Identity Management. If access and permissions to your systems and data are not properly protected and managed, the business is put at risk in terms of data security, compliance, and organizational efficiency.

If your employees lack proper access and permissions to the organization’s systems and data, they simply cannot do their jobs or do them less efficiently. The organization’s goals would be compromised.

Cyber Crime is Targeting Employee Credentials

Many companies have most of their data and business processes (email, CRM, etc.) in the cloud. The easiest way for hackers to get to these assets is through legitimate employee logins. This is why cybercriminals actively go after credentials to assume a legitimate user identity and breach a system.

Accordingly, credential compromise has become the leading cause of data breaches, with 80% of data breaches being tied to stolen privileged credentials and 77% of cloud account breaches being due to credential theft.

Loss of Data Could Result in Significant Costs

Management is responsible for the proper use and security of data for customers, products, finances, or personnel. After all, this data is one of your organization’s most important assets. Therefore, access to this data should be well thought out and organized. A loss of data could result in significant financial damage or, at best, a loss of image.

Data loss due to ransomware is particularly costly, and no size company is safe. Ransomware is now being sold to those that do not even know how to write code through Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) platforms. This puts even more companies of all sizes at risk.

Between 2020 and 2021, ransomware remediation costs more than doubled, jumping from $761,106 to $1.85 million per incident.

Manual Versus Automated IAM

Accesses and authorizations are usually still managed manually by in-house IT departments or an office administrator. The manual management of users and permissions in the network takes up a lot of time with already limited staff resources.

In addition, manual administration of permissions is prone to errors. Errors in permissions management lead to potential data loss, data protection risks, audit problems, or image loss.

Poor communication is also a factor when using a manual process. For example, what if an employee has left a department or been promoted, but the person in charge of changing their access permissions is not informed of those changes? This leads to an accumulation of authorizations and licenses among users. Everybody gets permissions and licenses; however, nobody gives anything back, and this happens not only with trainees. This accumulation of permissions and licenses is a data protection risk, a problem during audits, and a serious cost factor because too many licenses are purchased.

In short, manual identity and access management requires significant time and effort to execute and remains prone to oversights, slow execution, and data entry errors. Manual provisioning also typically requires unnecessary administrator-level permissions for Tier 1 staff, inherently increasing security risks.

Automating IAM allows your organization to boost efficiency and security, virtually eliminate errors and delays, and reclaim significant IT bandwidth. By connecting your HR system to Active Directory (or another directory service), you can create, provision, and manage users/groups, assign role-based access, and secure your entire IT environment with rapid process execution over every user’s complete lifecycle—from onboarding to offboarding.

Trust Tools4ever for Your IAM Needs

With a proper IAM solution, you ensure that the right employee gets an appropriate set of systems and permissions in an automated and rule-based manner. This relieves your IT/office administrator, protects your data, and ensures satisfied employees thanks to optimized IT processes. An IAM solution also helps you to pass audits more easily.

For over 20 years, Tools4ever has developed solutions dedicated to streamlining account management tasks. Our goal is to ensure our partners have the right software tools to manage their environments and processes. From managing identity and access controls to improving IT security to unburdening helpdesks worldwide, Tools4ever delivers quality IAM and Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) solutions.

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