12 IAM Best Practices That You Should Follow for Your Enterprise
Introduction
Identity and Access Management has become an essential ingredient to overall enterprise security. Every enterprise these days is an internet and cloud-driven company. All modern enterprises had to work with an extensive employee count and associated log-in credentials. So now, organizations, more than ever, are adopting IAM solutions to provide better control and access to users and employees. But integrating an IAM solution won’t be enough to secure the organization and its digital perimeter. Organizations also need to enforce IAM best practices for providing verified access to confidential and sensitive corporate data. This article will cover a detailed outline of the various IAM best practices that every organization should opt to stay ahead of the current and future cyber threats.
What is Identity and Access Management (IAM)?
Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a discipline of cybersecurity that enables an organization to set up rights, access control, privileges, and manage identities, all under this one umbrella term. IAM solutions get leveraged by employees (employee identity management) of an organization and customers (customer identity management) leveraging their products. Some well-known IAM vendors or product providers are Auth0, Sailpoint, Okta, Cyberark, Forgerock, etc.
IAM systems enable IT and managers to monitor & ensure their employees & users plus check who is authenticating and how they access the applications and resources. Apart from implementing access control & management, IAM systems also support various authentication methods such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), two-factor authentication (2FA), single sign-on (SSO), smart log-in, passwordless authentication, etc. IAM’s core components include:
· a database containing user-related information, digital identities, and access-privileges
· diverse security and IAM programs & tools
· a proper operation in arrangement for auditing logging and accessing history/logs within the system
Why do we need IAM solutions?
Identity and Access Management solutions comprise various sub-systems that help the organization define the access right for tools and devices they need to do their jobs. These cybersecurity solutions enable enterprises to allow automatic privileged access management & control to legitimate employees through digital identities under one umbrella. But to keep the company’s IT infrastructure safe from myriad threats, organizations also need to follow certain best practices while implementing IAM solutions.
IAM Best practices to Follow
Not surprisingly, external threat actors keep looking for prospects to streamline large-scale cyber attacks. The Covid situation has increased the likelihood of cyber attacks as people are working and accessing the organization’s network and infrastructure from across the globe. Witnessing such an increase in cyber threats, security experts and business leaders reevaluate their IAM best practices for 2022 and the years ahead. Here is a list of the nine security best practices organizations can leverage their IAMs.
i. Develop a zero-trust approach to security: In the modern & complex IT infrastructure, it is always better to assume that no one is trustworthy unless verified otherwise. In the zero-trust framework, all users in or outside the organization’s network should have to continuously validate them to maintain their access to the organization’s assets. It helps the IAM system evaluate the risk level during each session. Enabling a zero-trust framework in the IAM solution helps organizations identify abnormal behaviours, breaches, or violations of any law.
ii. Centralize the Security system: Centralizing the IAM operations allow all functionalities and configurations to reside in one central environment. A centralized security system will render better visibility to all the different security configurations. In a hybrid scenario having on-premise and cloud directories, maintaining a centralized security best practice allows managing accounts from one location. It also allows users to have access to both cloud & on-premise resources through a common digital identity.
iii. Eliminate High-Risk systems: Another elegant approach to keeping your IAM in its most robust form is to eliminate high-risk software and third-party integrations. There are a lot of software and integrations that no longer support patches and updates by their vendors. These end-of-life applications with no security updates might create security gaps in your IAM solution. Again, applications like remote desktop sharing can also pose security threats as the protocols they use can record or gain access to other’s systems. So it is always a good practice to ward off such risky systems.
iv. Use multi-factor authentication: Enabling a “must-have” multi-factor authentication is the first step in building a security layer for all user accounts. It adds a layer of protection to the sign-in process. The process adds an extra factor to assure that the entity involved in the authentication is a legitimate person and not an attacker. The three most standard categories or factors are something you know, i.e., the knowledge factor; something you have i.e., the possession factor; and something you are i.e. the inherence factor. Even if an attacker compromises the login credentials, MFAs like OTPs and biometric verification will restrict them from gaining illegitimate access to the account.
v. Ensure privileged accounts get properly managed: Organizations should practice the principle of least privilege, and if the privilege is given to the person, it should get properly managed. It is one of the IAM best practices to lock down the root user for day-to-day usage. Organizations should also assign a minimum permission level for achieving any particular duty or role and maintain complete monitoring and logging of such roles.
vi. Routine Review and Removal of Orphaned accounts: Another good practice to keep IAM solutions secure is to perform periodic reviews of user accounts and their privileges. Employees keep coming and going from every organization regularly. For off-boarding employees, their accounts became orphans, and anyone can misuse them. Hence, it is essential to do a periodic check on those orphaned accounts & delete them or withdraw their roles and privileges. It increases security and minimizes the chances of attacks & breaches.
vii. Enforce a strong password policy: Keeping weak passwords susceptible to brute force or credential stuffing is not an IAM best practice. Maintaining a strong password for all IAM use always acts as a firm pillar to constructing an impactful IAM solution. Passwords should be easy to remember and difficult to guess or crack. For password creation, organizations should follow the guidelines recommended by NIST.
· Password’s length should be 8 to 64 characters long.
· Special characters are a must.
· Better to avoid sequential or repetitive characters between the password (e.g., 98765 or gggg).
· A good practice is to set up a password expiration policy.
viii. Automate Onboarding & Off-boarding: Organizations should configure IAM where customers or users can self-serve or automate the onboarding and off-boarding processes. The onboarding should start with a registration page that will drive the users to follow the registration page and activate their journey from there. Through automated onboarding, anyone who joins the organization for the first time finds it mandatory to register before using any organization asset. For off-boarding employees, setting the IAM can help the organizations stay risk-free as the orphan accounts get automatically dissolved so that no one can misuse them.
ix. Conduct routine audits: Companies usually face the situation where they provide access to employees, which stay in the same condition even when they do not require access anymore. Others with malicious intentions can gain access to those privileges or data and might conduct something malicious on behalf of their credentials. Hence, it is a good practice to conduct a routine audit of the IAM and manually eradicate the accounts or privileges that are not necessary.
x. Establish Single Sign-on (SSO) authentication technique: Enterprises can establish a Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication mechanism for their apps and devices so that employees or users can use the same access tokens and logged information to gain access to other accounts. It reduces the challenge of remembering passwords, and enterprises do not have to take heavy precautions to securely store passwords.
xi. Expiry policy: In the case of password-based authentication, it is a best practice if enterprises can set 45 days or 60 days password expiry policy. Renewing the password after every two months or so helps secure employee accounts from identity theft, credential stuffing, and other such password compromise attacks.
xii. Never use default credentials and root credentials: Enterprises create several user accounts and roles through the root administrative account. It is always a good practice to change the default password & set a strong password, enabling multi-factor authentication. Again, experts recommend not using the same root credentials to create other users/employee accounts.
Conclusion
We hope this article has given you a clear understanding of the various best practices organizations should implement to leverage identity and access management solutions to their full potential. These best practices will allow your organizations to comprehend who has access to sensitive data and under what possibilities who can access it.
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