5 Steps to Identity and Access Management in a Work From Home World

In a world where your success depends upon your ability to securely house and share sensitive company and client information, you need to control who can access your network and what they can access. This level of control protects the client, you, and the employee from fraudulent access to sensitive information.

Here are 5 benefits of implementing identity and access management software.

1. Dual Factor Authentication makes sure the user is who they say they are.

The easiest way for an unauthorised user to gain access to your data is through hacked or stolen credentials. Dual Factor Authentication protects against this threat by sending a text message to the employee after they have entered their username and/or password.

DFA also prevents employees from sharing account access credentials, which is not only unsafe, but also potentially illegal in some regulated industries. Dual Factor Authentication (DFA) has been implemented on every major social media and email platform from Facebook to Yahoo!, therefore many people are already familiar with this 2-step verification method, making adoption easier.

2. Single Sign On simplifies life for your employees by requiring them to remember only one password.

Single Sign On (SSO) combined with DFA allows the employee to sign on to the network and pass all credentials to allowed applications. This feature is usually combined with a “Forgot My Password” feature, which combined with DFA makes for a “hands-off” self-authentication protocol to keep employees productive and IT out of the loop for password reset requests.

3. Device Management – protects your company’s information in a “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) world

Is that intern working out of the old coat room downloading your trade secrets onto her personal laptop? You bet she is. That is what Google found out one chilly day in Palo Alto. Device Management software such as Microsoft’s InTune provides a gatekeeper role for all devices, whether company issued or BYOD. Microsoft, iOS, and Android devices are all recognized. Onboarding, off-boarding, provisioning, and bricking are all possible from this one intuitive and easy to configure app. Protection extends down to the component level, preventing USB or Bluetooth data transfers, but allowing USB charging or playing content on a Bluetooth speaker or headset.

4.Geo-Location – Draw a line in the sand

Geo-location has been a feature of some network hosting platforms, for years. Generally, you could exclude countries and regions that would not contact you about normal business. This prevents hackers from outside of your area of business from accessing your network. Restrictions could be lifted from exclusion zones to allow employees to access the network when traveling.

Now your inclusion zone can be more granular, say, ‘your office’ granular. Geo-location allows access based on GPS coordinates. Imagine that once you have physically entered the office and verified your identity, your device would be able to access all approved applications without further verification.

5. Role Based Security – Stay in your lane bro

Not all employees need access to all data. Establishing role-based security in Azure Active Directory protects the company on all levels. Clients will know that their data is shared only with the service team representing them and only at the appropriate level of access. Compliance officers will know that data is staying within the proper confines of the organisation. IT Managers will know that the data is not leaving its silo.

Once you have placed your company and client data in the cloud, these digital assets must be secured like any other assets in your trust. Enabling some relatively common protocols allow you to control and monitor who, when, where, and how these assets are accessed.