How Organisations Can Leverage IAM Solutions to Steer Clear of Security Breaches

Organisations are increasingly grappling with challenges of ensuring their data and resources are secure and not exposed to security breaches such as identify theft, identity spoofing, etc through internal as well as external sources by grant of unmonitored access to applications and devices their users need. 

Organisations are realising how a security breach of sensitive business data can have a massive negative impact and this precisely explains why organisations across the globe are substantially investing on resources to secure their company data. Broadly-speaking, companies face challenges of securing their company data against employee actions, securing company data against malware and finally the cost of implementing and maintaining robust secure measures. These security breach challenges have necessitated the need for providing organisations a safe and secure place to store identifiable information and ensure their assets are secure. And this is where digital identity and access management (IAM) comes in handy as it serves as a single pane of glass and helps easily mitigate security breach challenges.

It may be pointed out that in any typical IT architecture there are multiple identity data stores, multiple administrative points, multiple data synchronisations and replications, which result in data redundancies and where users have to get individually authenticated on all applications every time they access.   

A close look at an IAM-enabled environment brings to the fore the fact that IAM has the capabilities to reduce multiple data identify stores to a single and centralised identify data source centre, which further eliminates the need for multiple data synchronisations and replications. Further, IAM also serves as a single administration point and more importantly offers a single sign-on (SSO) option to multiple applications 

Identity and Access Management (IAM) is often misunderstood as having the same features as Privileged & Access Management (PAM). Both IAM and PAM are different. IAM takes care of business’ everyday users or customers, controlling the access and experience that those users are granted within an application, while PAM protects users with privileged access to sensitive data.  There is little doubt that security threats are a big concern across organisations. A study conducted by Cybersecurity Insiders in 2018 revealed that 90 % of organisations feel exposed to internal attacks. What is more alarming is that another survey also indicated that 75 % of security incidents result from internal risks.

IAM Capabilities

• IAM offers complete identify lifecycle management like user creation, credential management, entitlement, provisioning management, compliance, auditing and reporting under one umbrella

• IAM facilitates access management – it ensures authentication, authorisation, single sign-on (SSO), password management are properly segregated as processes

• IAM enables role management wherein roles are created, fine-grained and managed

• IAM helps security leaders to define performance metrics as well as implement periodic or real-time automated audit to meet compliance guidelines

• IAM is of huge help in the area of distributed workforce, where providing remote access to corporate resources could lead to secutiy threats, if not handled well. A comprehensive and centrally managed IAM solution ensures high visibility and control needed for the distributed workforce to an enterprise IT administration team

• IAM can help administrators consolidate, simplify and control access privileges where critical applications are hosted in traditional data centres, private clouds, public clouds, etc

• IAM can consolidate and centralised corporate directories as well as streamline the synchronising process

• IAM enables dispensing with the manual provisioning and de-provisioning as it can fully automate the provisioning and de-provisioning process, thus providing IT full power over access rights of employees, partners, contractors, vendors and guests

IAM Benefits

• IAM helps organisations grow their business by adopting a holistic IAM strategy, wherein customers are managing their own identities and authorisation and organisations always have accurate and up-to-date customer info

• IAM can pave the way for an outstanding customer experience – a key element for achieving online service success – IAM can help improve customer experience, which in turn, improves loyalty and ensures repeat business and builds a positive business reputation

• IAM enables organisations to enhance their business agility. IAM with its single sign-on (SSO) provision and centralised authorisation management can always ensure secure access to systems without creating additional security siloes

• IAM can go a long way in trimming an organisation’s customer service-related costs. IAM enables customers to manage their own identities and authorisations, which eliminates the need to call customer support teams for activities such as customer registration, creating new identities, authorising and de-authorising employees, activating OTP services, resetting passwords, etc

• IAM also addressed the security breached caused by people inside organisations – IAM can limit damage caused by such insiders by ensuring these users only have access to system they work on and they cannot escalate privileges without supervision 

• IAM plays its part in connecting people with application and devices - a key requirement for digital transformation but in doing so can trigger security threats. IAM can manage the complexities associated with connecting with people with various applications and devices by enforcing stringent security policies with strong authorisations.   

It’s only fair to assume that Identity and Access Management (IAM) will have a critical role to play in organisations staying security breach-free. IAM will pave the way for organisations to not just enhance operational efficiency, but also augment their business growth.  

Supply Chain Digitization No More An Option for Businesses

Supply chains serve as the backbone of the economy and play a pivotal role in the success and failure of any organization. The global supply grid is highly interconnected and any kind of disruption at one touchpoint has the potential to derail the entire supply chain and its operations.

Global supply chains have always been grappling with various challenges and have remained vulnerable to disruptions, demand-supply imbalances, and ever-evolving customer expectations. The scourge of Covid-19 has brutally exposed this fragility and left enterprises with no option but to step into overdrive mode, and introspect their existing supply chain models.

Clearly, there is a pressing need for enterprises to build an agile, robust and resilient supply chain. A resilient supply chain will enable enterprises to weather the prevailing market challenges and thrive in the future. This brings into focus the strong need for enterprises to ride the digital transformation wave in their pursuit of staying relevant and competitive. 

According to a study conducted by Gartner, only 21% of global CXOs believe that they have a resilient supply chain while 55% are still in the planning phase of building supply chain resiliency.

Enterprises need to accord high priority to risk management - they must focus on identifying risks and threats in their existing systems and put in place risk management tools and frameworks to avert any untoward situation. Further, organizations will be better served with developing a risk-awareness culture as well as a prompt and effective contingency plans. 

Enterprises would also do well to assess the risk profile of their suppliers and should chalk out adequate contingency plans for its high-risk suppliers. After all, a smart supplier management process shall stand businesses in good stead for the future.

Leveraging digital technologies is no more business differentiator but a business imperative for businesses to foster their future growth. Organizations can bank on advanced data analytics as the latter can provide real-time visibility into your supply chain activities. Enterprises by leveraging data analytics can anticipate future demand and can scale up or scale down their production accordingly.

Organizations can use IoT to avail real-time shipment tracking and storage condition monitoring that improves the forecast accuracy of shipment delivery, resulting in increased customer satisfaction, better warehouse planning and risk mitigation.

Blockchain can also help business add value to their supply chains, in terms of driving real-time load traceability, smart contracts, fraud detection, etc that can drive more trust, transparency and efficiency in the overall supply chain. Businesses can count on robotics and automation tools which can help streamline and accelerate tasks and processes that were once performed manually. This can significantly reduce worker fatigue, increasing efficiency and driving economic benefits.

There is an increasing focus among solution providers to build a reliable data pipeline for analysis instead of just focusing on new data gathering. These solution providers leverage analytical and statistical models to derive business insights and generate measurable benefits.

Businesses can make their supply chains more resilient by applying technology accelerators such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Analytics, Robotic Process Automation, Distributed Ledgers, and Augmented & Virtual Reality. All these technology accelerators help organizations in attaining better demand forecasting, inventory management, capacity planning, and dispatch optimization.

Businesses are having to cope with ever-evolving customer expectations, the rapid pace of innovation, and cut-throat competition in pursuit of shaping up a resilient supply chain.

Clearly, supply chains have moved away from the long-held perception of being a back-office support function. It is no more about delivering a wow product or service but more about delivering a great customer experience that is more personalized and engaging.

Digitizing supply chains is no more an option for organizations. It is a must-have for organizations to stay relevant and competitive in a fiercely competitive marketplace.