The demands of business ecosystem have never ceased to increase. This has further increased challenges related to maintenance of secured IT environment across various IT touchpoints. In addition, technological integration should supplement organizations’ fundamental need to operate in a seamless manner. Each aspect of IT and related implementation or integration come with its own set of tailored needs. Furthermore, depending on the industry, functional or regulatory requirements, each IAM deployment is different. The management, including CFO’s, CSO or IT heads, needs to carefully look up at the pain points related to every aspect of technology so that they can be addressed.
Given this scenario, there have been too many technology services coming up with custom capabilities for various aspects of IT. With respect to IAM integration, the technical partner needs to understand a set of prerequisites – be it from the industrial standpoint, core technology based strategy or business aspect.
For making an informed decision in IAM Technology, one of the crucial branches of IT Security,
Here are some questions that need to be asked to zero in on your IAM partner:
1. How would the IAM provider maintain the integrity, confidentiality and privacy of the business data?
Businesses are required to secure and maintain the confidentiality of data. The speed at which data is getting generated and is flowing in various directions is unfathomable. Therefore, organizations need to know correct information regarding data mobility, data centres and privacy in maintaining the information.
Some important questions that need to be asked may include:
- Where is the data residing?
- If we need to move the data or take backup, who would be responsible for it?
- How would providers ensure that the data is not shared with anyone else?
…and the like. With this, one should definitely ask - How would providers ensure that there is no performance slack during the peak hours when the data is used to the maximum capacity?’
- Therefore getting into a contract that ensures basic data security with your service provider is quite necessary.
2.What is the knowledge base of the IAM Expert of your IAM partner with regards to your industry?
The portfolio of clients the service provider has associated with needs to factor in. What is more important is to gauge if your IAM Partner has knowledge about IT Security needs for your industry. An elaborate discussion with IAM partner to understand how compliance with the set of regulations that are applicable in your industry will be achieved. IAM partners must be forthcoming in bringing IAM related insights that fall in line with your business strategy and cyber security needs.
3.What edge does the IAM partner bring in order to manage dynamics related to identities (which include users, devices and applications)?
One of the important questions for organizations to consider is deploying IAM that manages dynamics related to identities. In the context of IAM technology, the identity paradigm is not limited to a user, but also accommodate devices synced with a user account and applications that are users for managing tasks. This takes up the identity to exponential numbers, given the range of devices and apps linked to an individual user’s account. Managing these numbers is something an IAM solution should ease. This also should throw light on establishing integration capacity for API based interaction.
4.How does the IAM Partner plan to approach your IAM integration?
IAM is not just about a solution being integrated into the IT system. There is a whole dynamism involved in IAM integration and the solution opted is just one part of it. Supporting tasks such as creating or purchasing the right VM Image, bringing customizable capabilities for integrating applications, Industry based requirements that IAM integration should comply with and IAM architecture designing are all important. The IAM Partner must be able to light on all related elements of IAM integration. In case you need to secure data the IAM provider should be able to demonstrate how the integration will support securing, storing and managing data.
5.How will the IAM partner manage identity dynamics on multiple IT platforms spread across on-premise and cloud?
Integration between cloud and on-premise is complex. A large number of businesses today rely on the cloud for at least some of their capabilities. They do not switch off On-Premise legacy systems either. This multiple and increase duplicity of identity management and access governance tasks for IT departments. The IAM Partner should be able to suggest alternatives that minimize duplication of tasks and manual efforts across multiple IT platforms.
6.How does your IAM partner foresees challenges and closes the loop for you?
It is a given that once the integration is in place, there would be challenges blocking workflow. An expert IAM partner should be able to foresee those challenges and must give you a solution to those issues. Those could relate to creating compliant systems, defining access algorithm or achieving integration with corporate application. A discussion with IAM experts regarding your current challenges and understanding how a solution will solve such issues is very crucial. If your IAM Partner believe that Application integration for corporate access need to be customized, then they must be able to define what customizations are required, or best if their experts can tailor one for you. The limit of a vendor’s expertise ecosystem is vital – this may include various capabilities including active directory, LDAP, GoogleApps and others.
7.Gauge your IAM Partner’s opinion on privilege access and the limit of flexible access to super users.
Management of access to privileged users is taking lead in IAM capabilities. Privileged Account Management (PAM) is about granting IT Administrators the required credentials to perform their jobs. Within the domain of Identity Management is a focused branch that takes special note of the requirements of powerful accounts within the IT infrastructure of an enterprise. How your IAM partner wises to approach PAM will give you an idea about their foresight on IT Security.
Getting to understand the thought process and competencies of your IAM System Integrator could save you a lot of fixing later on. After all, with IAM we wish to safeguard the security of data – that is either at rest or being created as you ponder over the points listed above.
