Identity and Access Management
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Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a policy and development system that ensures the right people in an organization have sufficient access to the technical tools. IAM applications come under the overarching IT security and information management umbrellas. Moreover, AIM systems not only define, authorize, and authenticate who will be using IT services, but also access the hardware and software that workers need (Waters, 2016). IAM is more critical as a regulatory compliance requirement in recent years, which has become more rigorous and complex. Identity-management systems, products, frameworks, and websites handle recognition and ancillary information of organizations that include applications for individuals, computer-related hardware, and software.
With the growing usage of cloud computing systems, it is important to note that the burden on various IT infrastructures has also grown. It is necessary to integrate the cloud to ensure that each person has only one single sign-on that would allow him or her to access all the resources in a company. If this is not acceptable, it will make it difficult for users to create multiple identities that they can use to access the different resources within an organization. “The federated cloud application allows for the creation of an identity bridge where the users can access resources using a single identity that is stored an active directory or a corporate LDAP” (Ertl, Stevanovic, Hayrapetyan, Wegh & Hardt, 2016). Businesses need to go for those that are easy and scalable to provide a proper federated cloud application, as several choices exist in the market.
IAM systems perform multiple security operations in a cloud environment. Besides, IAM keeps sensitive stored data save. “IAM system guarantees the security of identities and attributes of cloud users by ensuring that the right persons are allowed in the cloud systems” (Indu, Anand & Bhaskar, 2018). It also performs authentication, verification, and knowledge authorization. IAM is valuable for those companies that embed it in the cloud world. Due to its compatibility with several standard features in cloud computing, the use of IAM in federated clouds has significant advantages in keeping diverse network infrastructures secure.
IAM mismanagement triggers a rise in data breaches in federated clouds and cyber-crimes. “A strong IAM program helps to mitigate the effectiveness of some of a cybercriminal’s tools: privilege escalation, reconnaissance, remote access, social engineering, and data exfiltration” (Waters, 2016). Using IAM in federated clouds can help to remove unnecessary risks within an organization. Organizations can use multiple IAM strategies, and the performance of those solutions depends on cloud user identity management and information authentication. Alternatives to federated identity can be chosen based on their consistency and convenience. The amount of work needed to implement a cloud application solution also dictates its use.
IAM will assist any company that has plans to open up more companies in various geographical locations. Management may decide to provide their control of identity and access, or third parties can outsource this. This would make it easier for users to connect or even handle business resources using an SSO (Indu, Anand & Bhaskar, 2018). Several benefits come from using IAM in federated cloud applications. Firstly, it helps to ensure that there is minimum risk of danger from both within and outside the company. Since the program is capable of granting users rights, it makes it easy to monitor the actions of each of the users who have access to a program. The program also can collect user logs that are records of the events that users perform
References
Ertl, B., Stevanovic, U., Hayrapetyan, A., Wegh, B., & Hardt, M. (2016, July). Identity harmonization for federated HPC, grid, and cloud services. In 2016 International Conference on High-Performance Computing & Simulation (HPCS) (pp. 621-627). IEEE.
Indu, I., Anand, P. R., & Bhaskar, V. (2018). Identity and access management in a cloud environment: Mechanisms and challenges. Engineering science and technology, an international journal, 21(4), 574-588.
Waters, D.M. (2016). Evaluation of IAM as a Cloud Service. file:///F:/money%20heist%20s03/EvaluatingCloudIAM-MichaelWaters.pdf