2014 Trends for IAM – Insight from Tools4Ever

Mobile devices, mobile enterprise applications and cloud technology have all brought a level of efficiency and productivity to organization’s workforces. Constant access to information continuous collaboration allow employees to get more done in less time from any location where you can access the internet, and business managers are loving it. While these business managers relish in the new capabilities these new technologies allow for IT managers sit in the back room cringing.

Constant access, continuous collaboration, multiple points of network/data admission and the ability to share information from any location present threats rather than benefits to IT managers. Who is accesses what? How are they access it? When are they accessing it? Why are they accessing it? Are they allowed to access it? These are questions that have been scrutinized by IT managers for some time now, but with today’s to technology and the access they allow for these questions are being asked tenfold in today’s corporate environments.

Enter Identity and Access Management (IAM) and the new capabilities these solutions must bring in 2014 to align with the growth of mobility and the cloud. Dean Wiech, managing director, of Tools4ever outlines a few AIM trends that we will see in 2014 that will help IT managers answer the aforementioned questions with more certainty and confidence. The following is a quick recap of Wiech’s 2014 trends for IAM.

Popularity of the Cloud: “Cloud applications each impose their own password policies, which means traditional LDAP authentication with the Active Directory has become considerably more complex. Automatic management of user accounts and rights within the application is also increasingly difficult. In addition, existing on-premises APIs no longer work over the Internet, which requires the functional application manager to operate with a manual user management interface.”

SSO for Web Applications: “With single sign-on, end users only have to authenticate themselves once by entering their username and password from Active Directory. WebSSO then takes over the login processes, eliminating the need for a user to enter login details again when wanting to open an additional application. In addition to being more user friendly, this process is also more secure as it reduces the need for end users to write their credentials down or keep them in unsecure locations to remember them.”

Access Governance: “Identity and access governance enables organizations to easily ensure that employees only have access to the network resources they need to be able to perform their duties. In the past, access governance was largely the domain of financial institutions and major international concerns. Following a variety of developments, identity and access governance has become more accessible to care institutions, medium-sized companies – 1,500-5,000 staff – and other commercial organizations.”

Broad access to Information Systems: “Through identity and access management, it is possible to automate the provisioning and authentication process to reduce the overwhelming amount of manual labor that the IT department needs to perform. Overall, the Identity and Access Management market continues to grow and evolve to help meet the needs of organizations and the changes that they are making within their company.”

Click here to read more from Wiech about IAM in 2014