In another three years, Gartner predicts that seven in every ten employees will access confidential company data via applications, devices, or networks outside the purview of IT teams. In 2022, that number stood at four in ten employees.
Enterprises cannot control how their enterprise data is accessed in a distributed work environment. However, they can control who accesses it by restricting access as a policy. This sets the stage for zero-trust security architecture, where enterprises define and enforce access controls based on user profiles, not on whether the user is within the network.
To accomplish this, enterprise applications must be onboarded on an Identity and Access Management (IAM) system that orchestrates access as users onboard, offboard, or move laterally within an organization. Through improved authentication and authorization practices, IAM enables organizations to enhance governance, strengthen access management, and prevent fraud or privacy violations.
Why IAM Application Onboarding is a Challenge
The first step towards operationalizing identity-based access controls is to onboard enterprise applications on the IAM system. This requires groundwork, especially around mobilizing support from application owners and business users. This is both a cultural and a management challenge due to:
- Lack of visibility: The security team managing IAM systems needs to ensure that the business applications are properly integrated; however, knowledge of application ownership is poorly maintained. While this information exists in configuration management databases (CMDBs), it is often inaccurate. This creates operational bottlenecks for the security teams that must determine the current owner of each application, understand access profiles, and ensure the integration status.
- Black-boxed access logic: Since security teams lack end-to-end visibility into each application’s status, they cannot accurately map user identities to access policies, leading to critical gaps in assessing the current risks in the infrastructure.
- Inadequate risk prioritization: Without visibility into the status of each application and the risks associated with the application based on its current method for access management, the security teams struggle to prioritize applications for onboarding to minimize risk. Here, the 80/20 rule applies – where 80% of the business-critical needs are catered by 20% of applications. Through proper reporting, the organization can provide input into the business-critical applications with the highest risk scores to focus efforts where needed.
- Governance/Compliance: Enterprises must comply with geographic or industry-specific data privacy regulations such as PCI, SoX, or HIPAA, mandating controlled and authorized access to applications and data. If not, enterprises risk fines, reputational damages, and loss of customer trust.
Streamline IAM Application Onboarding with Persistent
Persistent partners with enterprise security providers like Zscaler to create solutions for modern, secure organizations. Our IAM solution stack includes an Application Onboarding tool that promotes collaboration, automates repetitive tasks, provides visibility into the status of each application regarding onboarding, reports on current risk, and improves security posture.
The crucial pillars of our solution are:
- Organization of information: Our IAM application onboarding solution helps take stock of business applications and information of application owners and seamlessly integrates with the CMDB to keep it updated. The integration with IAM helps manage the succession policies for application ownership on a continuous basis.
- Single source of truth: The IAM solution will maintain the access policies regarding user access across applications. Through the application onboarding, the application will utilize those policies when allowing users to access the application. This eliminates multiple locations for defining access privileges and reduces the risk of inaccurate and non-compliant access rights. Persistent helps organizations validate application integration with IAM systems by capturing relevant information and accurately mapping access controls with user profiles.
- Risk Prioritization: The security team can use a single view of applications and user profiles to assess the risk level of each application based on the implemented security controls and access mapping. They can then work to set priorities based on a risk-based mitigation strategy for business-critical applications or those most prone to a cyber-attack to improve the security posture.
- Business-security Alignment: Securing data and ensuring authorized access to company assets is a key business priority, not only from a compliance standpoint but also to foster customer trust and enhance employee experience. Persistent’s IAM application onboarding solution provides visibility into the status of applications regarding their integration with the IAM solution.
Setting the Stage for Zero-Trust Security Framework
IAM application onboarding is a critical step towards implementing a zero-trust security posture, the most effective approach to preventing potential data breaches. Zero Trust denies every access request or ‘no trust’ for users until they are verified, whether internal or external.
Implementing zero trust is a journey, but it builds on the foundation laid by IAM and application onboarding. Ensuring and reporting on the status of applications onboarded to IAM improves overall security and provides visibility into risk assessment, which leads to facilitating corporate governance and compliance.
To streamline your application onboarding to IAM, get in touch with us today.
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