Over the last year, have made shifting to the public cloud their top priority. Many have started by migrating email, productivity software, and web hosting, and this is where a majority of are expected to be spent as well.
What about the IT management tools used to manage users access to these cloud resources on a daily basis, like cloud identity management for instance? Well, it鈥檚 not a top priority. Only are going towards IT management. If organizations plan to experience the agility, efficiency, and security gains the cloud has to offer, this is ill-advised. They need to consider why cloud identity management should be a priority as they continue to execute on their cloud strategy.
The Centrality of Identity
The identity sits at the center of all work that happens at an organization. The role of an identity management solution is to securely connect end users to the systems, apps, file storage, and networks they require to do their job. When the right identity provider is in place, IT admins can automate most of their user and system management. This creates more consistency and gives sysadmins more time for higher value tasks.
At the same time, end users gain frictionless access to their digital tools. For example, the average user takes . When centralized identity management is in place, users only have one password to deal with.
When identity management isn鈥檛 in place, a single user is left with:
- 154 credentials to type out each month
- 36 minutes spent a month just on typing credentials
What does this add up to for a 50 person company over the course of a year?
- 360 hrs spent on typing credentials
That鈥檚 a ton of time spent on typing credentials. On top of that, regularly experience password problems. Also, if 76% of employees regularly experience password problems, that means IT spends a lot of time helping users reset their passwords. In fact, about are password resets.
This is just one example of how an identity management solution sits at the epicenter of day-to-day work life of both IT admins and end users. It鈥檚 why cloud identity management should be a priority as IT organizations migrate to the cloud. In this cloud-forward era, though, IT admins can鈥檛 utilize just any identity provider. They need to be strategic about which solution they place at the hub of their organization.
Why Cloud Identity Management?
So, why should IT admins consider a cloud identity provider (IdP) over a traditional identity and access management (IAM) solution? Well, first, it enables them to go all cloud and fully take advantage of the efficiency, agility, and cost savings the cloud has to offer. Next, legacy identity providers weren鈥檛 built for the heterogeneous IT landscape that has enterprises deploying , Linux running , and companies paying for on average. Traditional IAM solutions were created for on-prem homogeneous environments.
So, it makes sense that the diversity of IT systems and technology was one of the top challenges in managing IT infrastructure for 47% of participants in a聽.
Conversely, cloud identity management doesn鈥檛 require any on-prem hardware or software, so organizations can truly go all cloud. It also inherently supports legacy and web-based applications, physical and virtual file storage, wired and wireless networks, and Mac, Linux, and Windows systems. This lends itself well to IT organizations who are looking to optimize user and system management, improve the end user workflow, strengthen security, and use the best tools available. It鈥檚 why cloud identity management should be a priority.
The Impact of Prioritizing Cloud IAM
Choice Exists
A platform-agnostic, provider-independent IAM solution with a multi-protocol approach means organizations (and their employees) will have more choices. Instead of being limited to specific protocols and platforms, they can leverage whatever IT resources that make the most business sense for them. This was imperative for Cabify, a cloud-forward transportation network company that grew over 3000% in the last two years.
They鈥檝e grown 鈥渟o fast in so little time that [they] outgrew the standards [they] had in place, and some never had time to be in effect鈥�. One standard they lacked was centralized user and system management. They had considered Microsoft庐 Active Directory庐, but about 80% of their PCs use Windows Home Edition. In order to use Active Directory, they would have 鈥渉ad to upgrade about 1,500 PCs to Windows Pro. At about $80 per system, the sheer cost of that made it impossible to go with Active Directory.鈥�
After all, would it really have made sense to spend $120,000 on upgrading a Windows operating system solely because the directory service didn鈥檛 support it? Cabify didn鈥檛 think so.
Furthermore, Cabify works in a 鈥�heterogeneous environment. [They] use Mac and Linux in addition to Windows, and Active Directory doesn鈥檛 work well with either of them.鈥� So it really didn鈥檛 make sense for Cabify to spend so much money on adapting their environment to the identity provider, to only have it manage part of their environment. It would have been like 鈥溾�utting a big dinosaur in the middle of the room鈥︹��, and a really expensive dinosaur at that. What they needed instead, was an IAM solution that could adapt to their environment and navigate change with ease. Cloud identity management is doing just that by 鈥減aving the way鈥� for Cabify to accomplish their IT vision.
Work Happens
A cloud IAM solution that supports systems, applications, file storage, and networks regardless of protocol, platform, provider, and location is a powerful IT management tool. It centralizes user access to virtually all IT resources, thereby eliminating ad hoc processes. Cloud IAM was certainly the powerful tool Doublestruck needed to Make Work Happen鈩� for their sysadmins and end users. Before the London based education tech innovator implemented a cloud IdP:
鈥淭hey were really feeling the pain of having a bunch of systems all set up different ways for different users. [Their] end users were feeling that pain too.鈥�
As soon as they implemented a cloud identity provider and centralized everything, 鈥�identity and access management got much easier. [For starters] users have the same password for everything.鈥� Consequently, users aren鈥檛 forgetting their password, so they鈥檙e submitting fewer support tickets related to password resets. In the event a user does forget it, they can easily reset it themselves. With the reduction in password resets alone, Doublestruck IT admins have been able to focus more of their time on 鈥渂uilding new infrastructure and resources for the company rather than keeping access up to date.鈥� Even more importantly, it has 鈥渆nabled end users to avoid lockout delays,鈥� allowing them to seamlessly access their IT resources day in and day out.
Security Thrives
discovered 52% of participants expected their security budgets to increase in 2018. What are organizations using their security budgets for?
- 74% report it’s to enforce best practices
- 69% state it’s to address compliance mandates
Making cloud identity management a priority can help with both security factors. A cloud identity provider enables IT admins to centrally enforce identity security best practices with features such as Password Complexity Management, Multi Factor Authentication, and SSH key authentication. Additionally, IT admins can use IAM to lock down systems in their environment using security policies, which can remotely disable USB drives or require Full Disk Encryption.
When Cabify set out to standardize identity management, elevating security best practices was a key objective. In the past, 鈥渆veryone [in Cabify] was logging on to their systems using local accounts. Some of them were generic, and there were no sufficient tools to enforce password security鈥� With [a cloud identity management solution], they鈥檝e been able to clean that up, and it鈥檚 been huge for [Cabify] to move users away from using local accounts on their Windows and Mac systems.鈥�
鈥淸Cabify鈥檚 IT] environment is much more secure, especially now that they can enforce the password standards that they want.鈥�
Enforcing security best practices often goes hand in hand with meeting identity compliance regulations. This was certainly the case for Doublestruck and their need to prepare for GDPR compliance. 鈥淥ne of the big rules that [Doublestruck] must follow for GDPR is to have a way to say who has access to what data at what time. [Doublestruck鈥檚] old setup had so many accounts being shared鈥� it would have almost been impossible to do that. However, implementing a cloud identity management solution allowed them to fix that. They were able to 鈥渟eparate out all of [the] user accounts. By the time GDPR came around鈥� Doublestruck was prepared, and 鈥淸they] can鈥檛 think of any organization that wouldn鈥檛 benefit鈥� from a cloud identity provider.
Cabify and Doublestruck were not alone in experiencing such positive gains. Over 50,000 organizations are prospering thanks to having choice, efficiency and security, and it all began with making cloud identity management a priority.
Learn More
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