What is IAM?
Identity and Access Management (IAM) is the centralized management of identities and access. The primary goal of IAM systems is a single digital identity for an individual. Once this digital identity (ID) is created, it must be maintained, modified, and tracked for each user.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) is therefore about defining, managing the roles and access permissions of each user on the network. These users can be customers or employees. The reason why IAM is used is that IT systems are typically heterogeneous and are accessible over an internal network. Management is thus performed by administrator intervention in IdM or by automated processes.
What is single sign on (SSO)?
With a single sign on (SSO) system, users are authenticated only once (typically to Access Management). The user is then given access to all systems without having to log into each system individually. For example, when a user logs into Google, they are automatically logged into their Gmail and YouTube accounts. This is a simplification for the user who does not need to remember additional passwords. At the same time, access can be removed centrally from a single location.
How much time the helpdesk often spends on the fact that the user has forgotten their password and needs to reset it. At the same time, how much comfort does the user have if he has to remember 10 passwords, plus different lengths with different characters (not counting the fact that he has to change his password every 3 months for critical systems). The single sign-on system reduces the number of passwords, increases user comfort and reduces helpdesk costs. For example, a doctor in a hospital has to focus on treating patients and not dealing with the fact that he forgot his password again.
Federated identity management
Federated identity management allows you to share digital IDs with trusted partners. It is a shared authentication mechanism that allows users to use the same username, password, or other ID to gain access to more than one network.
Single sign-on (SSO) is an important part of federated identity management. While SSO single sign-on allows users to log on to different systems within an organization, federated identity does the same across multiple organizations. This model only works between collaborating organizations – trusted partners who essentially vouch for their users.
For example, Active Directory, Azure, SAML, LDAP and ADFS can be used for B2B identity federation solutions.
Benefits of Single sign on (SSO)
The benefits of using single sign-on include:
- Saves users time when entering passwords into individual systems.
- Reduces IT support costs by reducing the number of requests (e.g. password resets).
- Reduces the risk of accessing third-party sites (using federated identity ) because user passwords are not stored or managed externally.
“Mythbusters” SSO
Myth 1: SSO slows down IT teams and increases their workload.
SSO increases IT efficiency through automation. It also provides better security and streamlines workflows. It directly addresses IT teams’ main challenge, which is to seamlessly, securely and quickly connect employees to the tools they need to do their jobs. SSO also enables faster scaling, better visibility into application access, and reduced help desk tickets and IT costs.
Myth 2: SSO is difficult to implement.
Legacy tools may have been complex in their day, but modern SSO is quick and easy to deploy. Today’s SSO tools have prebuilt connectors to thousands of regularly used applications, saving IT teams from having to manually create integrations. Organizations can also connect users and import them from existing directories without having to configure, install or support their hardware or make changes to their firewall. SSO is easy to deploy, centralizes the rollout of new users and applications, is highly available and minimizes costs, ensuring a simple yet secure approach.
Myth 3: SSO creates a single point of failure, making it less secure.
At first glance, SSO’s requirement for a single password may seem to create a wide opening for cyberattacks. In reality, however, the main entry point for failure is the user themselves. When users are forced to juggle different logins, they often resort to password recycling and poor password hygiene, which poses a security risk to businesses. By eliminating the need for multiple sets of credentials, SSO allows IT teams to set password policies that standardize common security protocols while monitoring application, user, device, location and network context for each access request.
Myth 4: SSO is the same as a password manager.
SSO and password managers allow users to access multiple applications with a single login, but that’s where the similarities end. Password managers are vaults that store and remember user logins for different applications or websites protected by a single primary password. However, they focus on protecting passwords, which account for more than 80% of all security breaches and offer hackers a potential entry point into an organization or identity. SSO solutions, on the other hand, manage access through trust and leverage existing relationships to create a single domain where authentication takes place.
