Security

3 Common Myths About Identity and Access Management

The more important IAM becomes for agencies, the more dangerous the misconceptions about it. Here’s how to distinguish fact from fiction.

J.P. Pressley

J.P. Pressley is a contributing writer to BizTech magazine and an editor at Manifest.

The cyberthreat landscape is constantly shifting, and state and local governments are feeling the heat. Nevertheless, agencies are under more pressure to digitize citizen services and improve government efficiency. The core challenge at the state and local level is to optimize the digital experience for citizens and government employees while ultimately improving security.

Security preparedness is the cornerstone of digital government, and identity and access management is the cornerstone of security preparedness. As agency decision-makers continue investigating IAM as a conduit for digital government, they must also be extremely mindful of the facts — and just as important, the myths — that surround it.

To that end, here’s a look at some of the most prevalent myths about IAM to help separate fact from fiction.

Click the banner to learn how IAM solutions can enhance digital government.

Myth 1: IAM Is Only for Big Agencies

IAM solutions no longer require complex systems and large data centers, nor do they always come with a high price tag that only large businesses can afford. On the contrary, IAM is simple to use and effective, and it remains a smart investment for organizations of any size.

While some state and local government agencies develop single sign-on (SSO) capabilities and other IAM components internally, many leverage options such as Software as a Service. This alternative has broadened the range of choices for IAM solutions.

DIVE DEEPER: Agencies are using IAM in increasingly complex IT environments.

According to CrowdStrike, “others have turned to Identity as a Service (IDaaS), which is a cloud-based subscription model for IAM offered by a vendor. As with any as-a-service model, IDaaS is often a viable option because outsourcing IAM services can be more cost-effective, easier to implement and more efficient to operate than implementing these services in-house.”

IDaaS is a particularly good IAM choice for smaller agencies.

A CDW article notes that “IAM is no longer a luxury reserved for the Fortune 500. Instead, it’s now a prerequisite for improving security and employee productivity in every organization, regardless of size.”

Learn why citizens can benefit from identity management.

See how state CIOs focus on cybersecurity and identity management.

Myth 2: IAM Reduces the Risk of Breaches Due to Human Error

Think of IAM as human-proofing an organization’s endpoint security, much like a parent would childproof a home. It makes it harder for mistakes to happen, but it doesn’t eliminate the risk altogether. If vulnerabilities do emerge, however, the consequences are likely to be less severe because IAM has prevented a full-scale security breach.

According to Proofpoint, “identity-centric attacks are a practical calculation by bad actors. Why would they invest their time and resources to build exploits to help them get in through a virtual back door when they can just walk through the front door?”

This is why stolen credentials and phishing are two of the top three ways that cybercriminals infiltrate organizations. In fact, 74% of all security breaches are caused by “human actions,” meaning that someone fell for a scam or social engineering tactic.

EXPLORE: IAM is a foundation pillar of a zero-trust environment.

This is also why IAM succeeds. By helping authenticate users’ true identities, IAM mitigates the risk of security breaches due to human error.

IT leaders looking to achieve cyber resilience should prioritize IAM practices and train employees to spot the signs of a phishing scam before it escalates.

“Consider this example,” the CDW article suggests. “An employee was out to dinner with his family and knew he was not attempting to access corporate assets, yet he still validated an access attempt through multifactor authentication (MFA) on his smartphone. Only training that increases individual awareness and accountability could have stopped this successful ransomware attack.”

Myth 3: Zero Trust and IAM Are One and the Same

IAM is a core tenet of the zero-trust philosophy. It’s an essential step for organizations on a journey toward achieving zero-trust maturity. But using IAM does not mean that an organization has achieved zero trust — it’s more complicated than that

Zero trust requires that organizations leverage multiple solutions for optimal security at every endpoint within an IT system. These include MFA, SSO, privileged access management, role-based access modeling, automatic account elevation, identity governance, continuous authentication, and user and entity behavior analytics.

“The current IAM marketplace includes multiple vendors and solutions that meet nearly every budget and delivery preference — cloud, hybrid or on-prem,” notes the CDW article. “Don’t let IAM myths keep your organization from advancing your journey toward zero trust with identity security.”

gorodenkoff/Getty Images